


suffer me to go my own dark way

by coalitiongirl



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Post 5B
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-26
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-10 09:44:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 31,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6978241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coalitiongirl/pseuds/coalitiongirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Under the extravagant hair and harsh makeup, it’s still Regina’s eyes gazing back at hers. There’s something hard and malicious in them, but the Queen smiles and Emma shivers at the dark melancholy beneath the surface. “She wasted every chance we had with you,” the Queen breathes. “And you would still choose her?” </i>
</p><p>After 5b, Emma and Regina find themselves struggling with an unpredictable Evil Queen who's just as likely to kill as she is to kiss, to destroy as she is to help, and to hate as she is to love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I posted the first section of this on Tumblr and then decided to expand it to a full fic, whoops. EQ/Regina/Emma post-5b, though I'd like to do a bit more than just smut. This should be updated as I write! Hope you enjoy. <3

“Um. Nice dress,” Emma says, her eyes flickering downwards before she tears them away and blinks up at Regina’s face instead. “Is this some kind of…Archie exercise? I know you’ve been kind of down since the whole crushing-the-heart-of-your-evil-alter-ego but…Henry hasn’t seen you like this, has he?” Her eyes flicker downwards again. 

 

Regina looks amused. “You talk too much,” she says, brushing past her into the house. “Perhaps that’s part of the appeal.” 

 

“Appeal?” Emma repeats, trailing after her. Regina’s in a mood, apparently. “Hey, do you…want a drink or something?”

 

Regina turns again, very suddenly, and Emma nearly crashes into her. “What is it about you?” she says, frowning, and Regina’s fingers are suddenly pressing painfully into her cheeks. She pulls Emma forward by her grasp on her face, inspecting her as though she’s eyeballing a fruit at the grocery store. Emma is very bemused. And a little confused. And embarrassingly aroused.

 

Regina cocks her head, an abrupt gleam of dangerous interest in her eyes, and she jerks forward and kisses–

 

–oh, my _god_ –

 

–kisses Emma ferociously on the mouth. Emma nearly staggers back in shock and then kisses her back just as fiercely, hands sliding down the sleek satin of her dress to tug her closer as she gasps into Regina’s mouth. And she’s been low-key fantasizing about this for years but it had never been quite like this in her mind. There’s no gentleness to Regina’s kiss, none of the push-pull that has marked their relationship. There’s only _push-push-push_ and Regina in full dominance-mode, pressing her against a wall as she tears open Emma’s shirt and dives in.

 

And Emma’s fully prepared to give as good as she’s getting. She presses forward, splaying her hands across Regina’s chest and eliciting a surprised little noise from her; and she grins into Regina’s neck and props her up onto the kitchen table, sliding her ridiculous dress off one shoulder and biting it gently. 

 

“I can see how you grew on her,” Regina purrs, tearing open another button on Emma’s shirt. 

 

This is _weird_ , but Emma isn’t going to second-guess what might wind up being a three-bags-of-Cheetos-dream on the sofa if she thinks too hard about it. Instead, she gasps out, “You’re buying me a new shirt,” and hopes to death that this dream never ends–

 

–Particularly not with her ( _whoops_ ) boyfriend clearing his throat in the doorway to the kitchen. “Not now!” Regina snarls, hurtling some magical energy at Killian that throws him all the way back into the living room. Emma makes a half-concerned noise and Regina kisses her tightly, drives every single thought out of her mind in an instant, and Emma presses herself against Regina and palms her ass appreciatively.

 

“Oh, I _do_ like you,” Regina says throatily as they thread their legs together. She’s back off the counter now, and there’s something missing in their kisses that has Emma dizzy to contemplate, but she doesn’t second-guess it. Not Regina with her arms wrapped possessively around Emma, not Regina nipping at her neck and the top of her breasts, not _Regina_ , finally in her arms. 

 

Not until there’s a dangerous voice from behind them that has Emma springing away from Regina in horrified recognition. “Let her _go_ ,” a second Regina–  _her_ Regina– says from the doorway, eyes narrowed and hands out threateningly as she takes in the woman with Emma. 

 

The Evil Queen laughs, an arm snaking back out around Emma’s waist. Emma shudders with renewed desire. Regina’s eyes are heated, slipping down to Emma’s open shirt for a furious moment. “No,” the Queen says, her free hand tangling in Emma’s hair. Emma sighs and leans in despite herself. Regina’s brow furrows. “I’m keeping what’s ours.” 

 

Regina blinks at them, and _fuck_ , this is embarrassing, the way the Evil Queen has Emma like putty in her hands. She should really just…move away–

 

“She isn’t _yours_ ,” Killian snarls, back up and hovering a safe distance behind Regina. “She’s _mine_.” 

 

All three women turn disbelieving stares on him. He shrinks back. Emma says, “Killian, I think you’d better go.” 

 

“Yes,” the Queen sneers, her hand moving down to splay over Emma’s… _oh._ Emma’s cheeks are flaming red right now, though she can’t say if it’s out of humiliation or desire at this point. “Go.” 

 

“Get out of here,” Regina orders him in a mutter. He slinks out the door, glaring back at them all. “Emma,” she says, her voice carefully even. “We can stop her together.” 

 

The Queen smirks. “She doesn’t want me to stop.” She licks the shell of Emma’s ear, and Regina watches with eyes that _hurt_ , somehow, and suddenly the Evil Queen seducing her isn’t all that seductive anymore. “Shame you wasted all this time…what? Being her _friend_?” She laughs. “You could have tasted her instead.” 

 

“Emma,” Regina says, ignoring the Queen with focused determination. Her voice is gentle where the Queen’s is harsh and rich, and Emma struggles to watch her instead of focusing on the Queen’s hands as they probe against her clothed center. Regina’s eyes are stormy but always easy enough to read, and Emma nods slowly, preparing for a dual attack. 

 

The Queen sniffs. “Please. I’m still you, _Regina_. Every plot…every scheme and desire…all laid bare before me.” She strokes Emma’s hair and Emma turns, catching her gaze and freezing. 

 

Under the extravagant hair and harsh makeup, it’s still Regina’s eyes gazing back at hers. There’s something hard and malicious in them, but the Queen smiles and Emma shivers at the dark melancholy beneath the surface. “She wasted every chance we had with you,” the Queen breathes. “And you would still choose her?” 

 

“She’s Regina,” Emma says helplessly, glancing back across the room. The Queen is fixated on her, but she’s just as aware of Regina crossing the kitchen, bearing closer to them with every measured step. “I…I’m always going to choose Regina.” 

 

The Queen curls her lip, unimpressed. “Do you think I’m not Regina, Miss Swan?” she demands, the cadence so familiar that Emma melts a little. “Do you think I don’t know every last inch of her?”

 

She turns so suddenly that Emma recoils at the loss of her embrace as she shifts to meet Regina’s approach with a finger trailing across Regina’s heart. “Every fear,” she coos. “Every resentment. Every single hope crushed into dust.” She clenches her fist but Regina doesn’t flinch, just stares at her with dark eyes. “We can’t be _separated_ ,” she scoffs, “We can’t be cut cleanly in half like a pirate’s wrist.” 

 

She runs her knuckles along the curve of Regina’s jaw, her eyes hungry. Regina’s eyes are hungry, too, and Emma sucks in a breath and puts a hand on Regina’s wrist protectively. “You’re a part of me,” the Queen murmurs. “And I’m a part of you.” 

 

It’s been weeks since they’d thought they’d eradicated half of who Regina is, and Emma’s borne witness to it all– Regina’s frustration at her own indecision, Regina with every edge filed off and lost without it, Regina who is guilty and prone to tears and self-pity instead of the uncompromising fire she’d had before. Regina stares at this piece of herself with fear and loathing and so much _want_ that she’s rigid under Emma’s touch, trembling and burning as the Queen cups her chin and presses her lips, very carefully, onto Regina’s. 

 

“Whoa,” Emma says, eyes wide. Regina stands still, hands stiff at her sides, and doesn’t respond or pull away. Emma tugs her away instead, finally regaining control of her faculties in the presence of the Evil Queen, and there’s a sharp intake of breath from Regina as she retreats to Emma instead.

 

“Coward,” the Queen says smugly, watching them back away toward the door. Regina’s hand tightens in Emma’s, looking more terrified than Emma’s seen her since Henry had handed his heart to Peter Pan. “Too afraid to rejoin me,” she sighs. “Too afraid to admit the truth to _her_.” She waves a bored hand at Emma.

 

“The truth,” Emma repeats. “What truth?” 

 

“Emma, let’s just go,” Regina hisses, glaring at her other half again. The early evenness is gone from her now, though, replaced with a shaky uncertainty that doesn’t suit her at all. “We’ll take her down another time.” 

 

The Evil Queen laughs, melodious and rich and terrifying. “I’ll see you soon, _Em-ma_.” She breathes her name like Regina does when they’re fighting, a seductive purr that prickles at something deep in Emma’s belly. “We have some unfinished business to catch up on.” 

 

She twists a hand dramatically and vanishes in a cloud of purple, and Emma can only gape after her in confusion and more than a little sexual frustration.

 

* * *

 

There’s no time for dwelling on the encounter, though, not when Regina is white-knuckled and tense and determined to protect everyone she loves from the Queen. “She can get past blood magic,” she says, pacing when they meet up later that evening to fight Hyde’s ghostly minions. “She can get through any barrier that I can get through. Short of locking myself in my house with Henry–“

 

“I need you,” Emma says immediately. Regina blinks at her. Emma can feel the back of her neck warming at the startled gaze. “I mean…to fight whichever puppets Hyde unleashes next from the Land of Untold Stories. I can’t do that alone.” 

 

Regina’s fingers fidget against her waist. “You have Zelena.” 

 

“I need more than Zelena to take on the…evil Three Musketeers. Or all the ghostlings. Or Dr. Whale’s brother.” She wrinkles her nose. “All the books I skipped out on reading in high school.”

 

“You dropped out of high school.” Of course Regina knows that, though she covers up the judgmental tinge in her voice well. 

 

Emma scowls anyway. “Yeah, well, I didn’t actually believe that lit class was going to help me build any life skills for the real world. Of course, I also made the mistake of believing that I would _be_ in the real world for the rest of my life…” She leans back against the wall of the station. “My point is, I need your help. I can’t have you benched when we’re up against Hyde _and_ your evil self.” 

 

She shifts at the reminder of just what it means to be up against Regina’s evil self, her stomach twisting. Regina curls her fingers into her side and murmurs, “I’m sorry.” 

 

“You didn’t do anything.” 

 

“She sows chaos wherever she can,” Regina says, catching Emma’s gaze, and Emma’s gripped within it. “She…did what she did to make you uncomfortable.”

 

“Yeah,” Emma says, biting her lip. “She, um…she definitely succeeded at that.” Her mind conjures up memories of the Queen– lacking in Regina’s tenderness but still so fiercely passionate and demanding in all the ways that Regina does best– and hands and lips on hers. She pushes them away guiltily. “Super uncomfortable. Not with you,” she says hastily, and her hands move without _any_ permission from her brain to seize Regina’s hands in hers. “I know you aren’t her.” 

 

Regina’s hands are warm even as her eyes are unreadable. “No,” she says. “Of course not.” 

 

Emma thinks back to that moment on the roof in New York, to _I’m sorry_ murmured from Regina to her other half and to the sorrow in her eyes when she’d crushed the Queen’s heart. “Do you miss her?” she dares to ask. Regina’s eyes shoot up to hers again. Emma swallows. “I mean…I don’t know. She was a part of you.” 

 

“She was all the worst parts of me,” Regina says, and Emma’s lie detector pings. “No, I don’t miss her.” The vulnerability in her eyes flares like it had on that roof– _Look what you’ve become,_ the Queen had sneered, and Regina had been trapped in her gaze like a fearful child– and she looks away from Emma.

 

Emma doesn’t know what she’d do without her harder parts– especially now that she feels soft all the time, like every nudge and blow penetrates and reshapes her, again and again and again, and only the hardness beneath it keeps her intact– and  she’s learned to value them in others just as deeply. 

 

But Regina had wanted hers gone so desperately, and so Emma doesn’t say a word to question it.

 

* * *

 

It’s much later in the night when Emma ventures outside alone. Regina has them all sleeping at her house tonight– a barrier sealing them in until morning, so the Evil Queen can’t break in while they’re sleeping and kill Mary Margaret or herself– and the house has finally quieted. Emma had invited Killian into the safe house but he’d declined after their earlier conversation, which had ended…poorly. Maybe not as poorly as the Evil Queen kicking him out of his own house to seduce his girlfriend, but poorly. 

 

It’s crowded in the house now, five adults and three children all in close quarters, and Emma’s claustrophobic enough that she risks stepping out of the barrier to get fresh air before bed. Zelena has one guest room and her parents have the other, which leaves Emma as the only one downstairs on a pull-out couch. No one notices when she slips out into the backyard instead, walking in long circles around it and inhaling fresh night air.

 

“Are you really this reckless or were you expecting me?” drawls a voice from behind her.

 

Emma whirls around, her hands poised in front of her and prepared to do magic. “Have you been lurking around out here this whole time?” 

 

The Queen saunters out from the trees. She’s wearing something darker and slinkier tonight, a dress that hugs all her curves without the high necks and rigid spine of the one from this afternoon. Her hair piles up on top of her head and cascades down to her back, and her eyes glint with amusement when Emma gulps. “No,” she drawls. “I stopped by to see my son, and discovered that _she_ had locked me out. Then I went to your house. Where your boyfriend was waiting, all alone.” She quirks an eyebrow. Emma watches her, tense. “Useless, really, and not worth the minute it’d take to dispose of him.” 

 

“He isn’t my boyfriend,” Emma says quickly, relieved he’s alive anyway. “I mean, we kind of broke up. I guess.” 

 

The Queen glides around her, hips swaying and her movements graceful and a little hypnotic. “Do tell.” 

 

“Apparently, telling someone you love him and then making out with your best friend’s evil half is…not good for the ego, he says.” She’d gotten annoyed at him for making it all about him when she hadn’t even _known_ who'd been kissing her and then he’d snapped an admittedly valid point about her _kissing back_ , and now…breakup. Kind of.

 

“I haven’t told Regina about this,” she says, licking her lips. “Or anyone, but please don’t mention it to…” She pauses. The Queen looks at her with bemusement. “Right. Of course you’re going to.” Somehow it’s easy to be in the Queen’s presence and forget that she isn’t Regina, that all those familiar little tics and that sharp voice isn't still just…Emma’s overly defensive best friend.

 

“I could kill him,” the Queen offers. “If he’s become a nuisance.” She smiles, a gleam of warmth in her eyes at the idea of murder, and Emma’s oddly touched.

 

“That’s…sweet, I think?” Emma furrows her brow. She can feel a headache coming on. “But I prefer him alive, thanks.”

 

“Have it your way.” The Queen turns around, uninterested again, and Emma watches the way her ass moves under the clingy velvet with more interest than any platonic friend probably should. The Queen turns back, catches where her eyes are fixed, and gives her a wicked smirk. 

 

“Uh,” Emma manages as she returns, a hand snaking around Emma’s waist and then trailing along it as the Queen pulls away again. “What I don’t get is…I’m the savior. Your mortal enemy, right? But you haven’t tried to kill me once.” 

 

The Queen shrugs, an unexpectedly human gesture from a relic of a fairytale. “Yes, yes. I’ll get to you and Snow White eventually.” Her eyes are distant. There’s something terrifying about seeing this amalgam of Regina, who cares _so much_ , and to watch the detachment in eyes that have never been detached before. “But first, the woman who did this to us.” She’s hovering behind Emma now, inhaling the scent of the curve of her neck, and her tongue dips out to taste Emma’s skin.

 

“I won’t let you hurt Regina,” Emma says shakily, tilting her head back to give the Queen better access. She’s as helpless to resist her as she is Regina, so much of the Queen still uniquely the woman she…her best friend.

 

But the Queen pulls away from her, eyes flashing with sudden fury. “You won’t let me? _You_ won’t?” she snarls. “You’re a weak, unworthy protecter for her, and you think you can–“ She cuts herself off and Emma watches, hands tensing again as she waits for her attack. The Queen whirls around. “She thought she could use me and then reject me? And then _crush my heart_? How dare she.” 

 

She stalks forward again, Emma taking an unconscious step back to lean against a tree. “I’m going to make her pay for everything she’s taken from me,” she purrs against Emma’s lips, and Emma aches for her with everything she has.

 

It takes more strength than she’s willing to admit to turn away from her. “I’m not going to let you use me to hurt Regina,” she says, the Queen’s lips brushing against her cheek instead. 

 

The Queen sneers. “So be it,” she says, straightening, and she strides off into the night without a second glance back. Emma watches her longingly and hates herself a little for it.

 

* * *

 

She steps into the kitchen and freezes. Regina is sitting at the table, eyes on the back door, sipping at a cup of tea. “Have a good chat?” she says flatly.

 

There’s no way she could have heard what they’d talked about from across the yard, with a protection spell between them, but Emma shifts guiltily anyway. “Kind of,” she admits. “She doesn’t seem that interested in hurting my mother or me. Or Henry, I think. I wouldn’t let her near any of us, but we…don’t seem to be her main target here.” 

 

“Just me.” Regina finishes her tea. “I can’t say I’m surprised.” 

 

“Do you think she’s working with Hyde?” Emma ventures, desperate to get away from Regina’s dark, mournful eyes that say everything and nothing at once.

 

Regina shakes her head. “I’m sure he thinks she is, and she’s letting him believe it for now. Where that goes…I wouldn’t want to be Hyde at the end of this.”

 

“Is there any way to…I mean, what do we do with her?” Emma wonders. “If we can’t send her away to torment some other realm or crush her heart…” The latter idea prickles at her throat like _murder_ when it had only been an affirming moment for Regina when she’d first tried it.

 

Regina shivers with equal revulsion, as though the idea now makes her sick. “I don’t know,” she says, and Emma sits in tense silence as Regina rinses her cup and sets it on the drying rack.

 

She turns when she’s done, her fingers twisting together as she takes a breath, and her voice is uncertain when she speaks. “I came down here because Henry said you’d been planning to sleep on the couch.” 

 

“Oh. Yeah, it’s no big deal.” Emma shrugs. “Between a couch and sharing a thirteen-year-old’s room with him–” 

 

“You can share mine,” Regina says swiftly, and Emma stares at her. Regina’s cheeks tint a warm light brown. “I mean…there’s plenty of space in there, and I don’t see…why not. You certainly shouldn’t spend the night on the couch because I insisted everyone stay here.” She shrugs, the move more natural on her than on the Evil Queen. “And I’d thought that you’d be coming with Hook, but…”

 

“Yeah.” Emma chews on her lip, equally nervous. “Um. That’d be great, thanks. If you don’t mind?” 

 

“Of course not,” Regina says, offering her a genuine smile. “Let me get you settled.” 

 

She leads the way upstairs, Emma’s bag in her hands, and then there’s no more discussion of the Evil Queen, just the two of them moving around each other in the master bedroom as they prepare for bed.

 

Regina’s bed is probably the most comfortable one that Emma’s ever laid in; and she stretches out on her side of it and lays her head on the pillow, watching the last of Regina’s nighttime routine. Her face is freshly scrubbed of makeup and when she climbs into the bed, Emma catches a whiff of that expensive skin lotion that she associates solely with Regina. She’s wearing satin pajamas and she curls up on her side as she catches Emma’s eye, smiling across the bed at her. “Did you see Henry’s math test?” 

 

It’s so perfectly mundane, and Emma breathes more easily with every moment in Regina’s presence like this. “Yeah. Our kid kicks ass at junior high.” She wiggles her eyebrows. “And he’s good with the ladies, too. He had a _date_ this afternoon.” 

 

“Ugh,” Regina grumbles good-naturedly. “Don’t remind me. I’m still outlawing any dates past eight pm until his senior prom.” 

 

“Damn straight,” Emma agrees, a thought occurring to her. “So…” She squints at Regina. “When you sent us away because of Pan’s curse and gave us fake memories…” 

 

“Mmhm.” Their hands drift toward each other, almost unconsciously, and Emma laces her fingers through Regina’s and squeezes them.

 

“I just…you know, afterwards, I thought that would have been a really simple way to implant memories of a sex talk without having to actually _have_ it. And Henry was at the right age and everything.” She peers suspiciously at Regina, whose eyes are lidded and there’s a ghost of a smirk on her face. “Maybe you just didn’t think about it. It was a hectic time.”

 

“Maybe,” Regina murmurs agreeably. 

 

Emma eyeballs her, her mouth falling open in outrage. “You did leave it for me, didn’t you!” That had been…probably the most awkward experience of her life, except _maybe_ the moment earlier today where Regina had walked in on her making out with the Evil Queen.

 

Regina remains smugly reticent. “You can’t confirm anything,” she retorts, the smirk still toying at her lips.

 

Emma’s eyes narrow and she says playfully, without thinking, “I bet the Evil Queen would tell me.”

 

There’s a frozen moment of tension, Regina’s eyes darkening and Emma holding her breath as the Evil Queen hangs over them like a cloud of ash hovering, ready to devastate all below it. And then Regina rolls her eyes and Emma exhales so loudly that Regina almost smiles. “All right, yes. Yes, I did. You had it coming.” 

 

“What?” Emma yelps, voice too high with relief. “What did I do?” 

 

“You had my happily ever after with our son!” Regina accuses. “If you were going to get that while I was miserable, I was going to make you squirm at least a little.” She shrugs smugly. “I have no regrets.”

 

Their hands are still intertwined, and Emma pinches her sharply on her palm. “You’re the worst.”

 

There’s another breath, Regina’s eyebrows shifting upward. “I’m hardly the _worst_ ,” she says, a paltry attempt at levity. “I cast out most of that, remember?” 

 

Emma scoffs. “Oh, yeah. The infamously terrible Evil Queen mostly seems to want to…you know.” She pauses, embarrassed. “Seduce me.” 

 

Regina’s eyes lid over, heavy and amused, and Emma twists her legs together under the comforter. “That does sound like her modus operandi,” Regina says, her thumb tracing patterns into Emma’s palm. 

 

Emma shivers, the air between them thick again with a new kind of tension. “So…” She licks her lips. Regina’s eyes follow the passage of her tongue and Emma swallows. “That’s how you subjugated thousands? You put them up on your kitchen counter and…” She presses her legs together with a bit more force. 

 

Regina’s face alternates between chagrined and embarrassed and still amused at Emma’s predicament. “No,” she admits. “I was…I used people to get them where I needed them to be, but I rarely felt any desire to…” Her cheeks are two shades darker than usual, and she’s suddenly shifting so she can look away from Emma. “Kitchen counter them,” she finishes, her fingers slipping from Emma’s.

 

Emma leaves her hand where Regina had left it, her palm still burning from the touch. “So I’m special,” she says, laughing in her most self-deprecating way. She’d been more malleable, maybe, less resistant and too eager and _embarrassing_ , oh god, and Regina knows it. 

 

But Regina turns back to meet her eyes and hold them, something lurking within her face that is both warm and deadly serious. “Yes,” she murmurs, reaching out to splay light fingers against Emma’s cheekbone. Her thumb brushes a lock of hair back, and Emma feels it like a fire scorching her skin. “You are.” 

 

She closes her eyes, the conversation over for her, but her fingers remain against Emma’s skin; and Emma closes her eyes and feels Regina shift closer until they’re breathing the same air. Regina’s breath evens out and Emma mimics it as best as she can, but when she opens her eyes a few minutes later, neither one of them is sleeping at all.

 

* * *

 

They don’t talk about the morning after– about Regina wrapped around Emma and Emma’s hand up her shirt and the moment when Emma had awakened and smiled lazily, lost in a dream, and leaned in for a kiss. She’d jerked back just as quickly and Regina had flushed and run to the shower; and Emma had staggered out of the room, shellshocked, and nearly slammed into a smirking Zelena.

 

“Fun night?” she drawls, and heads downstairs for breakfast.

 

_Anyway_. They don’t talk about it. They head out later to put up a new barrier around Henry's school to keep the Queen out and keep safely to business. “Henry doesn’t leave the building until I arrive–“ 

 

“You need a password,” Emma puts in. 

 

Regina blinks at her. “Password?” 

 

“She looks just like you, remember? Something that’ll let Henry know it’s you.” 

 

“Oh. Yes.” Regina is off-kilter now, disoriented as she’s never been before that night on the roof. It’s not just the Evil Queen’s presence in the town that’s left her flailing– it’s the piece of herself that she’d given up when she’d split in two.

 

She’s been prone to tears lately in a way that had been more restrained before now. Emma’s walked into the mayor’s office on a half dozen occasions for lunch and had found Regina red-eyed and unsteady, given to a nameless despair that Emma hadn’t been able to free her from. 

 

She’d wanted to hug her. But they don’t…do the hugging thing. Ever. Emma had taken her hands instead and Regina had smiled up at her wanly and said, “It’s just an adjustment,” and she’d agreed to see Archie again with minimal persuasion.

 

The Evil Queen has brought out more desperation and more determination from Regina, and Emma walks side by side with her and watches with a quiet sort of admiration as she barks out new orders. There’s always something missing– something Emma had been drawn to as much as she’s drawn to Regina now– but contemplating _that_ means contemplating the kitchen counter incident, and Emma isn’t ready for that.

 

Instead, they wander the town, fighting off Hyde’s puppets as Zelena patrols the school building. “Do you think she loves Henry?” Emma wonders as they start back toward the school at the end of the day.

 

“I don’t think she’s capable of love,” Regina says stiffly. “I’m sure she _thinks_ she loves Henry, but she’d…want to possess him instead. She’ll twist and pervert every bit of love within her into ownership.” She glares into the woods behind them, the self-loathing sharp on her face, and Emma takes her hand.

 

Naturally, that’s the moment that Killian appears in front of them, turning a sharp corner from the Rabbit Hole and sneering at them both. “Swan,” he grinds out. “ _Regina_.” He says Regina's name with such bile that she blinks at him, startled.

 

“What now, pirate?” Emma can feel Regina’s eyes on her, inquisitive, and she shakes her head minutely. 

 

Killian catches it and glowers at them both. “Tread lightly, Swan. I have nothing more to lose.” It’s a threat that should be laughable, but Emma can feel old uncertainties and desperations rise anew at his disgust with her. It’s easy sometimes to surround herself with family and new missions and pretend that the Dark One and hell had never happened. Sometimes– every time Killian’s lip curls and something inside her remembers how much she’d put into a waning relationship– she’s that pleading, lovesick child all over again.

 

“Don’t threaten her,” Regina says, her voice disbelievingly mocking. “Who the hell do you think you are?” The resemblance to the Evil Queen is so uncanny for a moment that Emma examines her in consternation. But there’s warmth in her fiercely protective eyes, and her hand is tight in Emma’s and Emma breathes again. “Do you think you’re any threat to either of us? Let’s go, Emma.” 

 

“Bye,” Emma says flatly, and she hangs onto Regina and allows herself to pulled along away from Killian.

 

“You two are fighting,” Regina says when they’re alone again. “You didn’t say.” She scans Emma’s face, worried, and rests a hand on her shoulder. “Are you all right?” 

 

Emma bobs her head. “It’s fine. It’s…nothing to worry about. I have it under control.” She doesn’t know why she’d so readily give the Queen all the details but she can’t even admit that she’d broken up with Killian to Regina. 

 

Maybe it’s because she’s certain that it had been Regina who’d gone down to hell for her. Maybe it’s because she’s holding back so much shame that Regina– Regina who’d rejected all those dark, shameful parts of herself, just as everyone else had– won’t understand in the same way that she once had.

 

But Regina knows her well enough to know that she’s hiding something from her, and Emma can feel Regina’s eyes on her as they walk down the road to Henry’s school. “Emma, if there’s something you want to talk about–“ 

 

She pauses. Zelena is standing at the entrance to the school, Snow beside her, her face white as she stares at Regina. “But I just saw you,” she says, her voice high and frantic. 

 

Emma stops breathing.

 

* * *

 

“It takes eleven seconds,” Regina grinds out as they vanish and reappear at the house. She’s thrown backward with force, the barrier intact and rejecting any Regina who might venture into it, and Emma concentrates on tearing it down. “Three seconds into the chest, two to yank the heart out.” Regina’s breathing hard, the words shriller and shriller. “One to turn your wrist. Five to squeeze until it turns to dust. Do you know how _easy_ it was to learn that? Do you know how easy it is to make someone dust?” Her voice is rising. “ _She_ does.” 

 

“I know. I know.” Emma finally manages to tear the barrier down and they race into the house as one. “Henry! Henry?” 

 

“She’s going to take everything from me. She’s going to _punish_ me for loving him. Love is weakness.” Regina slams a hand against the table in the foyer and splinters it. “Eleven seconds.” 

 

Henry isn’t in the house. Of course he isn’t. The Evil Queen didn’t show up to his school in a sensible pantsuit and guess the password just to bring him _home_. “Where now?” Emma says, pacing. She isn’t thinking. She isn’t thinking about _eleven seconds_ or the powerlessness of knowing that Henry’s been _taken_ , god, she’d _liked_ the Queen and now– “There’s that passage under the library, and that cabin in the woods where we practice magic, and who knows where–“ 

 

“How are you so calm about this?” Regina flings at her accusingly, her eyes wide with outraged terror. “How can you just stand there like it’s– like she isn’t going to–“ There’s a certain kind of added fear that suffuses Emma at Regina’s frantic helplessness. Regina is deadly precision when they’re under threat, quick to take action but always with _focus_ , and this is–

 

“One of has to be!” Emma snaps back, breathing hard. “We have to take a minute and think this through, and you aren’t…” She gestures helplessly at Regina. “Regina, I’m scared, too,” she whispers, a dozen images of Henry in the Queen’s clutches seizing her with a violent tremble.

 

The fury crosses Regina’s face like a shiver and then falls, and Emma feels as though she can breathe through the claustrophobia again. “I know,” Regina says, inhaling. “I…how the hell did _she_ get the planning gene?” 

 

Emma laughs shakily, her heart still about to burst but its beats evening out. “Have you ever had a planning gene? Aren't you usually just…” She flexes her hands and a little ball of flames spark from her palms before they sputter out again.

 

“Emma!” Regina says, delight running through the strain in her voice. “You’ve finally picked that up!” 

 

“Kind of,” Emma says, beaming a little like the proud pupil who’s rightfully impressed her teacher. It’s almost like the days before everything had gone to hell, including them. “I’m getting there, anyway.” They breathe in tandem, eyes meeting with renewed, calm determination. Emma says, “Now, where do you think she’ll be?” 

 

Regina closes her eyes, thinks, opens them again. “The vault,” she says. “There’s a room inside that I rarely use. She’ll be there.” She takes Emma’s hand and they both disappear.

 

They reappear in the corner of a room Emma’s never seen before, concealed behind a tall wardrobe. Regina presses a finger to her lips and they peer around it, and–

 

Emma chokes out a barely audible sob.

 

Henry is sitting at a table that the Queen has magicked up for him, his brow furrowed as his pencil scratches against paper. “I don’t _know_ how to do these equations,” he says, his voice sullen again like the ten-year-old boy who’d brought her home.

 

_She_ moves into view, eyes dark and threatening as she looms over him. “You learned it today in class, or you wouldn’t have had it for homework. And you’re not moving from this table until your homework is done.” 

 

Emma blinks. The Evil Queen is…making Henry do his homework. That’s unexpected. She blinks again. Henry says, “I was going to have _help_ , if you’d just let her _go_ –“

 

_Her._ What her? Emma twists and winces.

 

There’s a second table set up near the back of the room, and Violet is wrapped in chains to a chair in front of it. She struggles against her bonds and the Queen says darkly, “You aren’t going anywhere near my son.” 

 

“She’s my _girlfriend_!” Henry protests, but he falls silent at the sneer that crosses the Queen’s face. 

 

“Be glad I didn’t rip out your heart,” she hisses at Violet.

 

Violet’s face is pale but defiant. “No, that’s what Henry’s other mom did to me when she was evil.” She grimaces. “It’s going to take a lot more than this for me to give up on Henry.” Henry blinks at her, gratified.

 

The Evil Queen raises an eyebrow. “I like you,” she notes, and Regina’s mouth falls open in outrage. 

 

“How can she _like_ her?” she hisses. “ _I_ don’t like her! What side of me could possibly–“ 

 

“Shh,” Emma says, eyes glued to the scene in front of them. Henry is scribbling on the paper again, and he looks close to tears. “I want to go home,” he bursts out, pale and angry and fearful.

 

The Queen’s eyes darken, and she restrains herself with visible effort. “This is your home, Henry. I’m your mother. Home is with me.” There’s a note of pleading about her voice now, and it tugs at Emma like Regina at Granny’s years ago, _I have his room just waiting for him_. She’d turned Regina down then and agonized over it for days. But with this Regina– manic eagerness glinting in her eyes– she wouldn’t have thought twice about keeping Henry from her.

 

“Why would you want to leave here?” the Queen says, wiggling her fingers. A cupcake appears on top of Henry’s homework and his pencil is transformed into an ice cream cone. “I think we’ve had enough homework now. How about dinner?” She claps her hands together, childlike. “And if you’d like to go out later, we can go to your math teacher’s house and _order_ her to do your homework for you!” She beams.

 

Henry drops the ice cream cone. The Queen scowls, capricious as always. “Don’t be ungrateful, dear. You don’t want to make me angry.” There’s a familiar note to her voice, a not-quite-Regina threat that chills Emma’s skin, and she’s stepping forward just as Regina speaks. 

 

“That’s _enough_ ,” she snarls, stalking past Emma to the table. “You don’t talk to him like that.” 

 

“He’s my son,” the Queen growls, unsurprised at their appearance. Henry exhales in a sob, standing unsteadily. “Don’t _move_ , Henry,” the Queen orders. 

 

“It’s okay, kid,” Emma says, inching forward. She catches Violet’s eye. “We’re gonna get you out of here, okay? It’s two against one.” 

 

The Queen scoffs. “You and her? That frail, shaking child? What could she possibly do to me?” She glides forward, circling Regina with her lip curled. “ _Weak_ ,” she spits out. “What have you ever done but be defeated by enemy after enemy until your enemies were all you had?”

 

Regina draws a fireball like a sword to battle. “I ripped your heart out and crushed it,” she grinds out, her back straight and her eyes on Henry. “If we’re talking _weak_.” But Emma sees her falter when the Queen steps closer, black nails scraping along the side of Regina’s neck to her shoulder. 

 

She steps between them and Henry, letting him flee to her and catching him in her arms. A furrowed brow and she manages to release the chains around Violet. “No one is leaving with my son,” the Queen says, eyes still on Regina. She flings out an arm and a magical energy fuzzes at the corners of the room. 

 

“Our son,” Emma says automatically, and both Reginas blink at her. She winces. “I mean…mine and Regina’s.” 

 

“Oh, yes,” the Queen says, whirling around. Emma stumbles back, her fingers tight on Henry’s arms. “I’m not your _untainted_ little success story anymore, so you can take my child from me. Isn’t that how it works?” She laughs, bitter and mocking and murder gleaming in her eyes. “Thirteen years of being a mother, discarded because I don’t live up to the _birth mother's_ standards.” It’s Henry who reacts first, leaning forward in Emma’s arms as his brow furrows, studying the Queen with a cocked head.

 

“Regina–“ Emma says helplessly, her eyes on the Queen’s. There’s no answer she can have to that, to dredging up old resentments and judgment as though they haven’t moved past it when they _have_. When even the idea of letting the Queen be anywhere near Henry is… 

 

“ _Don’t call me that!_ ” the Queen thunders, fire crackling from both hands. Henry is gaping at the Queen with the dawning understanding of a child who’s finally beginning to comprehend what had gone so wrong. Regina is staring at her with an expression Emma can’t read, and Emma can’t lose both of them to three-year-old mistakes, she _can’t_ –

 

Their son saves them. “Mom,” Henry says, darting away from Emma to approach the Queen timidly. The Queen blinks at him, fury mingling with uncertainty and leaving her still. “Mom,” Henry says again, reaching for her hand as his own trembles. 

 

She lets him take it, suddenly stymied by the kindness, and Emma holds her breath. There’s nothing he can say that can possibly…

 

But he doesn’t say anything at all, just lets his hand swing in hers and smiles at her tentatively. And somehow, she doesn’t attack him or teleport away or do anything more than gape at him and hold his hand tight.

 

Regina still looks on edge, still looks torn by the whole thing, and Emma’s afraid to say anything that might make it worse. It’s Henry, again, who navigates them through it. “Can I come back and see you tomorrow?” he says, and Emma’s tense at the question and even tenser at the Queen’s hesitant nod.

 

But the Queen doesn’t object when they leave together, Henry tucked back under Emma's arm as they head aboveground, and only then does Regina gulp back a sob and run to Henry.

 

“It’s okay,” he says, ducking into her embrace and holding her tight as her tears spill down her cheeks. “It’s okay. She wasn’t that bad until I said I wanted to leave. And I kind of want to see what she’s like.” He still holds on to both of them with as much energy as he had after the body swap with Pan, fingers clenched around their shoulders with force that belies his fear. “So I guess I have three moms now, right?” he says, laughing shakily, and Regina cries harder in his arms.

 

* * *

 

 

“The thing with her is–“ Emma starts, and then stops again.

 

Regina says wearily, “Don’t say that she’s not that bad.” 

 

“She’s not that bad,” Emma says, wincing. They’re patrolling the town again, eyes out for any more of Hyde’s cronies. He’s started sending out what Emma’s been calling ghostlings, shadowy people from the Land of Untold Story with their autonomy robbed from them. They’re less affected by magic than they should be, and Emma’s at a loss about what to do with them. 

 

Which…not an uncommon problem in recent Storybrooke, it seems. “I mean, she’s clearly not a very good parent, but she hasn’t been…trying to subjugate the town or anything? She tries to mother Henry, she tries to…talk to me…” She pulls her jacket tighter around her. “I don’t know. I met the Evil Queen when I went to the past, remember? She seemed a lot worse then.”

 

Regina shrugs moodily. “So…what? The Evil Queen isn’t all that evil because I’m not inside her?” 

 

“Maybe,” Emma says thoughtfully. “Maybe that woman wasn’t just your worst traits, but your best, too.” Regina gives her a sharp look. Emma puffs out a breath of air. “I’m just spitballing here. But aside from the dresses, the Queen doesn’t seem all that evil.” 

 

“That’s because you’re underestimating her,” Regina says sharply. “What she does in taking Henry– in taking you– that isn’t vulnerability. That’s vengeance and manipulation. She wants you because she knows it’ll hurt me, and she’s letting you…do your damned thing where you _believe in me_ with her because she knows it’ll serve her well when she betrays you.”

 

Emma’s not listening by the end of the sentence, focused instead on a throwaway comment at the start of it. “In taking me?” she echoes. “I’m not _Henry_. How do you figure that I’m…?” She frowns, uncertain where her question is going.

 

Regina purses her lips, inhales, says, “Emma, you and I–“ 

 

A bullet flies past them, nearly nicking Emma on the shoulder. Emma spins around, catching sight of a ghostling across the road with a musket pointed at them. Behind him, another dozen men step forward like they’ve just emerged from a Civil War reenactment. “Guns,” Emma bites out, eyes narrowed.

 

The twelve men fire as one. Regina throws out a sparking hand, catching the bullets with purple-white lightning, and Emma ducks and twists just in time to see another army of ghostlings behind them, these armed to the teeth with swords and axes and spears. “What the hell?” 

 

“Hyde’s bringing out the big guns tonight,” Regina hisses, tossing out a wave of magic that shivers through the ghostlings but does little more. 

 

Emma squints up at Granny’s roof, spying Hyde–  _no_ , Hyde and a woman she knows all too well– standing there, watching the ghostlings bear down on them. “No, he has new help,” she says, cursing her own optimism. The men raise their muskets again. Emma uses her own magic, strains and tosses out a wave of it at the closest ghostling. 

 

He howls, Hyde’s connection over him snapping as his body solidifies. The magic tears through his face, leaving it red and blistering, and he keels over on the ground and clutches it. “They can be hurt,” Emma says, horrified. “They’re real?”

 

“We have to get out of here,” Regina says grimly, flicking her wrist. A weak cloud of magic erupts and dissipates in an instant. Regina stares at Emma askance. “Too many of them. There’s some dampening effect on our magic.” 

 

The thirteen musketed ghostlings are shooting in a row, fire-reload-fire-reload, and Regina shields them as best as she can. Then there are swords swinging and Emma’s ducking, throwing herself in front of Regina, grabbing the sword from the one she’d hurt and swinging it as best as she can to hold off the others.

 

It isn’t enough. It isn’t going to be enough. They can’t teleport away and they can barely slow them, and Hyde’s ghostlings are fighting with extra force. “It’s them or us,” Emma says urgently, swinging the rusty sword and slicing lightly into a ghostling’s stomach. He folds, trampled by other ghostlings as he becomes solid again. “Regina, what do we _do_?” 

 

“We can’t kill them!” Regina says desperately, magic wild around her. “Emma, they’re _people_ –“

 

A ghostling lifts Emma into the air and throws her to the ground. She lands with a grunt, crouched down behind Regina’s protective shield, and Regina falters above her. “Emma!”

 

“I’m okay. I’m okay.” She tries to get up. Regina shifts, moving in front of her. “Regina, what are you _doing_?” 

 

“He wants me,” Regina grits out, jerking her head toward Hyde. “He wants to take me down, _fine_. But I’m not letting you get hurt in the process.” She turns, firing one last wave of magic at the musketed men, and then charges into the fray in front of them. 

 

“Regina!” Emma shouts, flying after her, but a ghostling tosses her back. They’re converging on Regina and ignoring Emma, all singleminded focus on the former. Regina is deep in the crowd now, and Emma pushes and shoves and can’t see anything–

 

–Anything but a flare of light and then a movement near the back of the crowd, a blur of purple and red and more red and Emma falls back, craning her neck to peer up at Granny’s roof again. There’s only Hyde standing up there now, his face tight with displeasure. 

 

Emma stumbles forward again, determined to save Regina. A ghostling rushes toward her, waving his axe, and then there’s another flash of movement and he’s missing his heart. His _physical_ heart, a cavity clawed open where it had been and a rapidly solidifying man gaping down at his bloody chest as he falls. 

 

Emma staggers back. More ghostlings are falling, covered in blood and their own intestines and their necks at unnatural angles. The ghostlings are no longer intangible creatures under Hyde’s control; they’re men and women, clawed open and murdered as though they’re no one at all. There’s blood everywhere and Emma can’t see anything but red-splattered corpses, can’t hear anything but a soft sobbing from somewhere near the center of the massacre.

 

_Regina_. She follows the weeping, lunges blindly through fallen men with no regard for her own safety, and grabs Regina’s elbow before she can lose her again. Regina is crying openly, her eyes stricken with horror like Emma’s only seen from her before when Henry is in danger, and her gaze is glued to the figure snapping necks in front of her. 

 

One final ghostling remains standing, his axe in midair as he holds it over Regina’s head, and she raises her face to it as though she might let it fall. But then the Evil Queen is in front of them, gleeful pleasure splitting her face into something inhuman, and she reaches into the ghostling’s chest with magic-tinged strength and pulls out a bleeding, blue-red heart. 

 

She crushes it like a sponge, squeezing until it’s a broken mass of thick blood, and only then does she drop it and turn to Regina. Regina is still sobbing, unmoving but for the tears that fall from her cheeks, and the Queen reaches out to brush them away with a tender thumb. “Hush, darling,” she murmurs, leaving sticky blood behind to streak Regina’s face with crimson.

 

Regina stares at her, empty-eyed, but she doesn’t move away. The Queen turns. “You,” she says, her voice sharper now. Emma is frozen in place, afraid. “Come with me,” she says, and Emma takes an involuntary step forward. “We have unfinished business to attend to.”

 

Regina remains silent and still, her hands trembling. Emma hesitates. The Queen says, “Very well.” She extends a hand toward Emma and Emma shakes her head, futilely, as the world around them melts into violet.

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this chapter has taken so long! It's been a lot to write, clearly. :)

She moves through the vault the moment the smoke around her dissipates, charges forward and hurls out a blast of magic that the Queen barely manages to stop in time. She looks startled at the assault, an eyebrow quirked and long nails tapping against the opposite arm. “Still so willful. I thought we were getting along.” 

 

Emma leans forward, breathing hard, and stares at the Queen’s hands. The blood is gone from them and from her long riding jacket now, so easily discarded with the revelry in murder that Emma had witnessed. They’re no less terrifying now. “I don’t make nice with mass murderers.” She bites her lip, reconsidering the truth of that statement. “Not right after they just massacred a few dozen innocents,” she amends. Man, her life is fucked up now.

 

The Queen looks amused at her distaste. “Do you remember what Regina told you in Neverland?”

 

She remembers…a lot.  _You want us to be friends? You’re a pathetic waste of ability. The same thing I always do. Our son. We love you!_ “Which part of it?” she says. For a moment, her skin crawls at knowing that…that this is  _Regina_ , that the Evil Queen who’d just executed all those people shares every one of their memories together. 

 

But there’s a darkness in the Queen’s eyes that Emma recognizes from Regina’s, and that’s… “She told you that she was here to embrace the darkness so you wouldn’t. One happy family.” She sounds dismissive, mocking, but not altogether as repulsed as she could have been.

 

They’re an uneven split, Regina-the-redeemed and the Queen-the-Evil, and Emma wonders suddenly which of them had been talking then. Maybe it  _had_ been Regina, resigned to be a prisoner of the darker methods of the Queen. Maybe it had been them both. “This is what you think you were doing?” She narrows her eyes. “I could have taken care of it with a lot less murder.” 

 

The Queen regards her challengingly. “And if you’d had no choice?”

 

“I killed Cruella to save Henry,” Emma reminds her. “I’d do it again to save Regina.” 

 

“Could you have killed all of Hyde’s puppets, if it had come to that?” She laughs. “Cut out their hearts and made an island in a sea of blood?” She stalks around her in a whirl of fabric, pausing in front of Emma to cup her chin. “I think you overestimate your own darkness, Emma Swan,” she says, her voice sleek and rich.

 

Emma jerks away, stung. “I do what I have to do to protect my family,” she says sharply. “To protect them from  _you_ and the army you helped Hyde set on us.” 

 

“I did that to teach Regina a lesson,” the Queen says serenely, and Emma glares up at her with renewed anger. “She is weak.” 

 

Emma’s fists clench. “She’s the strongest woman I know.” 

 

“No,  _I_ am,” the Queen corrects her, lip curling. “All those reservoirs of strength are mine now. Regina is nothing.” 

 

She has smug confidence in her own assertion, and it only infuriates Emma more. “And yet, she’s the only one who can defeat you,” she points out, remembering– just weeks ago, Regina’s murmured admissions and hands firm on her shoulders, Regina’s eyes glowing with tears and affection and so close– “She defeated you every day of her life for years. She’s stronger than  _you._ ”

 

“You’re a fool,” the Queen snarls, whirling around and storming toward the secret room in the vault. “I should kill you right now for your impudence.” She turns back at the doorway, her eyes glittering with murderous energy untamed, with–

 

_Cora was dangerous because she didn't have a heart. Regina's even more dangerous because she does_ , Gold had told her once, and Emma watches fury mingle with hurt mingle with mindless murder in the Queen’s eyes. 

 

“What’s your endgame?” Emma demands before the Queen can kill her or storm out. “What do you want here? Why do you talk about Regina like she’s the enemy but then save her? Do you want to take Regina’s place or kill her or–“

 

“Punish her,” the Queen says decisively. “Make her suffer and cower and whimper and  _beg_ for what she’s thrown away.” Her eyes gleam, almost with madness, and she hisses out, “She has to live for that, doesn’t she?” 

 

Emma’s throat is dry. “You said she was a part of you,” she manages.

 

The Queen scowls. “I was a part of her and that didn’t stop  _her_ from crushing my heart, did it? Or is she justified because I’m  _evil_?” She sweeps forward again, fingers stroking Emma’s cheek in a mockery of affection. “I saw you there with her,” she coos. “I saw you telling her to kill me. So bloodthirsty, our little Savior. Did you think I’d forgotten?” Her fingers drop, pressing against Emma’s throat with painful force. Emma is frozen, her breath hitching, her heart pounding.

 

The Queen bites hard on her own lip and leans down to kiss Emma, fingers still at her throat. Emma tastes blood, stumbles backward, and braces herself against the wall. The Queen stalks forward again and this time Emma doesn’t pull away when she kisses her, surges against the fingers at her throat and chokes with pain and pleasure alike as they move against each other, harder and faster as though they’re at war.

 

Emma can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t do anything but lose herself in this angry, fierce kissing. The Queen tears her shirt open and slides a leather-clad leg between hers and Emma grinds wantonly against it, yanks at the Queen’s hair with enough force that she grunts in pain and relaxes the force on Emma’s trachea, throws her head back as the Queen bites hard on the skin of her throat instead. 

 

She grinds harder against the Queen’s leg, desperate and focused as the Queen lays claim to every exposed inch of her body with her tongue and teeth. A part of her screams out  _murderer. Villain. Evil._ None of those reminders are doing anything to calm the churning in her stomach. Nothing can–

 

“I’m going to kill her,” comes a voice from the mirror behind them.  _Regina_. Her voice is as potent as a cold shower. Emma jerks up, pulling away from the Queen, and there’s a rich chuckle in her ear as the Queen slips around behind her instead. “I’m going to take out her heart  _again_ and kill her.” Regina is pacing in a circle in her living room, her fists clenched and her face wiped clean of tears.

 

Mary Margaret says, “I know we’re all angry, but killing the Queen won’t do any good–“

 

“Not her.” Regina presses one closed fist to her eyes. “Emma. Why the hell did she ever antagonize…” She sags. “It wouldn’t have helped. The Queen was always going to go after her.” 

 

“I know,” Mary Margaret murmurs, and they share a weighted glance that Emma can’t make sense of. “Now we get her back.” 

 

“If she even  _wants_ to–“ Regina sounds near tears, and Emma leans forward, her heart aching. 

 

Slender fingers slide around her waist, creeping upward, restraining her in her place. Emma says weakly, “Enough.” The Queen chuckles again, her breath grazing Emma’s neck as Emma tilts her chin back unconsciously. “She’s going to come for me,” Emma whispers, transfixed by the Regina in the mirror. Her head is in her hands, Mary Margaret rubbing her shoulder reassuringly, and Emma longs for her as acutely as she aches for the woman behind her. 

 

“You won’t go with her.” The Queen’s teeth graze the shell of Emma’s ear. Her hands dip up, thumbs stroking the underside of Emma’s breasts with blatant possessiveness, and Emma shivers and doesn’t respond. “You might never have crossed over, but you’re a little in love with the dark, aren’t you?” Her fingers thrum like vibrations over her ribs, playing them as a macabre piano. “Goodness is a luxury you’ve never trusted.”

 

“My parents leeched all the darkness out of me before I was born,” Emma admits, her eyes still glued on Regina onscreen as Zelena enters the room. The Queen waves a lazy hand and the mirror goes silent. “It seems like…like good always comes at the expense of someone else, doesn’t it?”

 

The Queen is silent, but for an approving sigh against Emma’s ear. Emma ventures, “I think…I never trusted the people who claimed to be  _good_ when I was a kid. The foster parents…” Her skin crawls at the reminder. “The cops. There were people who lived in the dark and you couldn’t trust them, either, but you knew what to expect from them.”

 

She can’t say any of this to Regina, Regina who’s tried  _so hard_ and doesn’t need her cynicism now. Regina had eradicated all the darkness from herself and she wouldn’t understand what comfort Emma still finds in it; how there had been times when Regina had thrown herself into danger with wild eyes and murder in her heart and Emma had been relieved instead of afraid.

 

You’ _re a little in love with the dark_ , and it’s so easy to twist in the Queen’s embrace and let her kiss her hard, wrap arms around her neck and feel hands groping at her ass and expect nothing more from her than just this moment. This isn’t Regina– not the full Regina, not the half of her that Emma knows loves her but would never cross _this_ line– but she’s still _right_ in a way that only Regina can be. There’s no hesitation, no fear of consequences, and for a moment she feels like she had as Dark Swan, unfettered and free.

 

When she leans back, the Queen is smiling at her, and it isn’t scheming or proud as much as it is fond. “I could get used to you,” she says, and it’s…kind of like a declaration of affection, in a weird way. Emma flushes.

 

“How touching,” says a dry voice from across the vault, and Emma looks in the mirror instead of turning around. She sees herself, wrapped in an embrace of ownership, her shirt half-open and a hand lingering at the small of her back. And behind her: Regina, eyes blazing with fire as she glares at her counterpart. Mary Margaret stands beside her, pale and worried, and Zelena lingers in the back and studies the Queen with fascination. 

 

“Now let her go,” Regina says, voice raw and pained, and Emma stumbles away from the Queen and toward the three women who’d come to save her. 

 

The Queen sneers at them. “No,” she says, and she reaches into Emma’s chest and plucks out her heart.

 

* * *

 

There’s silence for a frozen moment, Emma voiceless at a betrayal she could have anticipated but hadn’t cared enough to– and Regina stands very still, fists clenched and eyes dark. The Queen examines the heart and then her nails, bored. 

 

Mary Margaret says in a shaky voice, “Take me instead.” She steps past Regina, arms at her side and chin up, and stands in front of the Queen in defiance. “I’m the one you want, not Emma. Let her go and take my heart instead.”

 

“Mom–“ Emma says, moving between them. The Queen doesn’t stop her, though there’s a steady squeezing sensation in her chest that has her stumbling.

 

Mary Margaret is pale and unmoving. “I don’t know what she’s doing to you, but I’m not going to stand by and let her continue.” She raises her bow and draws an arrow.

 

The Queen waves a hand and the bow splits in two. “I have no need for you,” she says, turning away, and Mary Margaret reels as though she’s been struck. “Nor you.” Cold eyes land on Zelena. “ _Sister_.” She laughs.

 

Zelena’s lips twist. “If you think I’m afraid of _you_ –“ 

 

“Oh, but you should be.” The Queen stalks forward and Zelena starts, hand rising to call forth her magic. Regina seizes her wrist before she can, her eyes still glued to Emma’s heart. “You think torturing a few Munchkins and crying about Mommy is anywhere close to the things I’ve done? You’re a _novice_ playing at wicked because Regina had better things to do than pay attention to you.” 

 

She hisses, low and nasty. “Our mother held Regina prisoner. Abused her, tormented her, _tortured_ her.” Regina stands still, hand on Zelena’s wrist and face drawn and tired. “She molded us into a queen, and you were just stupid enough to believe that this was sunshine and daffodils.” The Queen throws back her head and laughs. “Oh, but she’s in heaven. I suppose it’s all right now.” 

 

There’s something almost hypnotic about the way she strokes Zelena’s chin, silky mockery in her voice. “The fool who would build her life around Cora would gain only contempt from her. It’s entertaining, really. As entertaining as knowing how starved for affection you both are.” Her eyes flicker from a stone-faced Regina back to Zelena’s trembling form. “Weak, pathetic fools.” 

 

Zelena slaps the Queen, eyes wild. Regina bursts out, “Zelena, no!” and the Queen slaps Regina in return, slashing long nails across her face as her hand tightens around Emma’s heart. Emma chokes, the vague tugging exploding into suffocation, and she drops to her knees, folding around her empty chest.

 

“Say you’re sorry,” the Queen drawls to Zelena. “Or I kill everyone in this room.”

 

Zelena glances at Emma and then Regina, stubborn eyes set. The Queen grins. “Maybe sorry isn’t enough,” she says perkily, tilting her head to watch her. “Kneel before me and kiss my boot.”

 

“Go to hell,” Zelena spits out. The Queen gives Emma’s heart another quick squeeze. Emma lets out a strangled noise. The Queen’s thumb runs over the underside of the heart, soothing as an embrace, and the pleasure washes over the pain, soothes it and leaves her on her knees with barely enough brainpower to comprehend the tension in the room.

 

Regina says, her voice slow but for the strain of panic running through it, “Do it now or I’ll kill you myself.” Zelena flinches. The Queen snickers.

 

Zelena drops her head first, then her knees wobble and give way. Her fists are clenched and a single tear runs down her face as the Queen extends her boot. Zelena kisses it quickly, her eyes downcast, and she doesn’t look up again until the Queen turns away from her and strides back to Emma.

 

“You’re not a prisoner here,” she says, smiling down at her. There’s laughter in her eyes, a glee at the mood that’s settled over the vault, and Emma swallows and looks at Regina instead. Regina gives her a tense smile that must be intended to be comforting, eyes watery and fists clenched. Emma tries to offer her one of her own back.

 

The Queen’s mood darkens. “Fine,” she snarls, shoving Emma’s heart back into her chest. Emma gasps, feeling a bit as though she’s been hit with a sledgehammer. “Go with the simpering princess and the wailing witch. See if my other half can do anything near what you want from me.” Regina’s eyes narrow and the Queen turns to watch her, eyes smug. “And you,” she begins, sauntering to her. 

 

Regina’s hand moves instantly, now that Emma’s heart is safe again. Her hand flies out into the Queen’s chest and closes around her heart, holding her fast. “Stay away from my family,” she growls. “Stay the hell away from Emma Swan.”

 

The Queen doesn’t flinch, but Emma can see her back straightening at the strain on her heart. “You won’t do it again,” she says, still confident with Regina’s hand wrapped around her heart. “Deep down, you know the truth.” 

 

“And what truth is that?” Regina grits out, her eyes flickering back to Emma. Emma stands, helpless and uncertain what to do now. 

 

The Queen murmurs, suddenly gentle and cruel at once, “No one will ever love you as I do. It’s why you can’t destroy me, isn’t it? Somewhere under that spunky teen-heroine exterior, you need me more than anything.” 

 

Regina’s hand slips out of her chest. The Queen fades away like a waning violet flame with Regina’s hand still outstretched, her eyes wide and distressed.

 

* * *

 

The truth is, Regina’s never so energized as when she’s standing opposite the Queen. She’s been queasy about fighting and her biting commentary has been positively mild, and it’s only when the Queen and Regina are in the same room that she regains the fire that makes her so… _Regina_. Conversely, the Queen seems to revel in her own cruelty more and when she’s in close proximity to Regina.

 

It’s almost as though they both have something to prove around each other. It’s almost as though they can feel those gaping holes in their essences more incontestably when they’re standing across the room from each other.

 

It hurts Emma’s brain to contemplate, so she doesn’t say anything to Regina when she’s led to Regina's bed that night and feels hands wrapping around hers. Regina holds their joined hands to her stomach and relaxes only once she’s asleep, and only then does Emma pull away from her and walk to the window to stare down at the backyard.

 

The Queen is pacing, unaware of Emma looking down at her, and she pauses and stares into the house with what Emma reads as longing on her face. _Her_ house. Emma can’t help the quiet empathy that rises within her as the Queen stands alone in the streetlight-washed yard, arms wrapped around herself and eyes shadowed as she yearns.

 

She knows what it’s like to…to be in the same place as the Queen is, determined to be unaffected and fight only for herself like no one else would. She grasps better than Regina ever will what the Queen does by protecting Regina when she needs it and then rejecting her, and pretending that it had been nothing. Because _only for herself_ , and no vulnerable face should be able to undo that. 

 

And more than anything, Emma grasps what it means to be cast out of a family and a home, to be suddenly rejected and on your own and angry and vicious about it. She’d once told Regina that only Regina could understand her in their unique way. And when the veneer of cruel, murderous monarch fades, there’s only a defensive lost girl angry at the world who remains.

 

Emma shivers and slides back into bed, studying the girl who’d remained when the Queen had been taken from her. The lines of her face are softer, somehow, younger; she reaches for Emma in her sleep like she never had before. The Queen _takes_ Emma with imperious expectation, but Regina is warm and more inviting than she’s ever been without her prickly exterior.

 

Emma craves them both like oxygen, like everything she’s ever desired in two women constructed to be polar opposites.

 

With a sigh, she slides back into bed and nuzzles Regina’s shoulder, wrapping her arms tightly around her and feeling the warmth that comes with the embrace.

 

* * *

 

“You heard about last night, right?” Emma says warily, frowning at her son.

 

Henry shrugs. “I mean, I know it was sucky and she’s kind of…terrible sometimes. But…” He scuffs his foot against the porch as they enter the house, swinging his knapsack off his back and leaving it on the floor next to the door. “I promised.” He bites his lip. “I used to make a lot of promises right after the curse, when you were in the Enchanted Forest and I was staying with David.” 

 

He sounds miserable about it now, and Emma looks at him askance. “You were a kid.” 

 

“Yeah.” He stares at the ground. “But I think I hurt my mom a lot. And the Queen… All that stuff she said yesterday…” 

 

_Thirteen years of being a mother, discarded because I don’t live up to the birth mother's standards._ It had taken Emma a long time to acknowledge how badly she’d acted in the early Storybrooke years, and they still don’t talk about it now. It’s in every coordinated glance, in unfinished sentences and in words that trail off, in everything but real _conversation._ But the Queen is snide and cruel but truthful, forces them all out of the comfort zones that Regina had reluctantly let them all retreat to, and Henry is finally old enough to grasp what had gone on there.

 

“I just…I think she’s _right_ ,” he says, biting his lip. “Mom always talks about it like she was afraid of losing me, but I didn’t realize for a long time how _spoiled_ I was.” 

 

“Henry,” Emma says carefully. “She _was_ the bad guy. You had every reason to back away from her. You weren’t the one who fucked that up.” That had been Emma, then Regina, then Emma again. There’s blame to share, but none of it had rested on the shoulders of an adolescent coping with an earth-shattering revelation.

 

Henry heaves his shoulders again. “I want to go talk to her,” he says, face set and stubborn. 

 

“Okay,” Emma says, sucking in a deep breath and touching her chest over her heart unconsciously. “But I’m coming with you. And we have to tell–“

 

“Me?” Regina says. She’s leaning against the wall of the foyer, arms folded and face unreadable. “Henry, your knapsack belongs in your room, not blocking the front door.” 

 

Emma jumps, startled. “Jesus, Regina, how long have you been there?” 

 

“Long enough to know you’re contemplating going back to her,” Regina says, eyes narrowed. Henry hurriedly picks up his backpack and makes a break for the stairs. Regina shakes her head. “She _took out your heart_ , Emma. What the hell are you thinking?” 

 

“I think…” Emma winces. There’s no way to go about this that isn’t callous and sounds foolish. “I think that Henry’s right, and he made a promise to her. And…you two are kind of volatile.” She can feel herself sinking into quicksand, deeper and deeper into Regina’s snarling disbelief. “I think it’s better if I go with him than if you do.”

 

“Then you’re an _idiot_ ,” Regina bites out, desperation in her voice. “She’s working with Hyde! She’d kill both of you without a second thought!”

 

“I know you,” Emma says, her smile intended to dispel Regina’s anxiety. It fails, and she earns a glower for her efforts. “He’s working for her. And I think…” She twists her fingers together. “I think we can win her over if we show her that she’s still a part of this family? With Henry, I mean,” she says hastily. “Maybe if she…if they spend enough time together, she might–“

 

“She might nothing!” Regina says furiously. “You’re going to _romanticize_ the _Evil Queen_? You don’t know the Evil Queen. No one knows the Evil Queen like I do.” She clenches her fists. “She’d rip out your heart and devour it whole if she felt like it. She’d wipe out this entire town if you irritated her _just enough_ –“ She shakes her head vigorously. “You want to go play house with _that_? You want to bring our son to her?”

 

There’s no understanding on her face; no sympathy for the woman who completes her in every literal way. Emma thinks back to the woman who’d smiled at her with fond satisfaction, who’d gone from smug seduction to _I could get used to you_ and Emma had thought the same right back at her. “He promised her.” 

 

“I don’t give a damn! We don’t make promises with _evil_!” Regina’s voice is shrill. “We don’t–“ She studies Emma’s face, her own face crumpling, and she shakes her head, wordless. “What could she possibly have to offer you?” 

 

Emma licks her lips and opens her mouth, and Regina shakes her head again. “Don’t answer that,” she says wearily, and something closes off her face. “I don’t want to know.” 

 

She walks away from her, holds Henry tightly to her like she really is afraid that she’ll never see him again, and she doesn’t look at Emma again as Emma and Henry depart. 

 

Regina trails after them, all but invisible except to those who know to expect her, and Emma feels hot frustration and exhaustion and doesn’t turn to call her out on it.

 

* * *

 

It might all be worth it just for the Queen’s face when she sees Henry descend into the vault. “Sweetheart,” she says, flying across the room to wrap her fingers around his chin like she doesn’t quite know how affection works. “You came back.” 

 

Henry nods and smiles at her, his pale face anxious but determined. “Hi, Mom,” he says. 

 

She beams at him, unmistakably genuine, and only after Emma clears her throat does she look up and notice his guardian for the day. “Miss Swan,” she says, her smile sharpening at its edges. “I see you’ve managed to escape your babysitter for the day as well.” 

 

“Be nice,” Emma says warningly. The Queen laughs. Emma amends, “Pretend to be nice.” Henry grins at her, calming fractionally as the tension in the room settles to a comfortable _partially suffocating_. “I have some ground rules,” she says, raising an eyebrow at Henry until he makes a face and steps away from them. “Why don’t we go for a walk?”

 

The Queen slides an arm through Emma’s, her eyes glinting with surprise. “Outside the vault?” 

 

“Yes,” Emma says firmly. “Rule Number One: We don’t keep teenagers cooped up in cemeteries when it’s time to visit their evil moms.” 

 

“Spoilsport,” the Queen pouts. Emma steers them to the side, letting Henry walk ahead in the direction of the park. “I suppose you’re going to insist I don’t take out your heart while we’re with Henry, too.” She pats Emma’s chest, a satisfied smirk spreading across her face when Emma can’t suppress the flinch.

 

“No one’s heart,” Emma says, and the Queen sighs heavily. “No murder, either. In fact, don’t start up with anyone at all. We’re not screwing Henry up any more than we already have.”

 

“So demanding,” the Queen grumbles. “As though I couldn’t kill you right now for your insolence.” She scowls. “As though I’m going to put you coddling my son as a priority in our time together. I’m not _Regina._ I don’t grovel to Henry until he forgives my every misstep.” 

 

She stalks forward to walk beside Henry, set on wreaking some havoc, and Emma sighs heavily and takes off after her. “Wait, listen–“

 

“How many people did you kill?” Henry says, turning to the Queen, and both Emma and the Queen freeze.

 

“I…last night?” the Queen asks, taken aback.

 

Henry shakes his head. “No, ever.” 

 

“Everyone kills people in the Enchanted Forest,” Emma says hastily, catching up to them. “It’s…a different system than here. You have wars, executions…all that stuff when you’re a queen.” She shrugs, struggling to be nonchalant.

 

Henry studies her for a moment and then turns back to the Queen. “So did you only kill people during wars?”

 

“My whole rule was a war,” the Queen says, eyebrow quirked. “But no, I also killed whenever I felt like it.” She waves her fingers dismissively. “An irritating guard here, an entitled peasant there…and, of course, anyone who supported Snow White.” She says it casually, without any hesitation, and Henry doesn’t flinch but regards her with a somber gaze.

 

“I thought so,” he says, and if not for his trembling hands, Emma might have bought his casual tone. “Why?” 

 

“Why?” The Queen looks puzzled.

 

“Yeah. Why’d you kill all those people? Was it fun? Were you angry?” 

 

“Henry, I think that’s enough,” Emma says firmly, cutting off the Queen before she can fire another dozen bullets into Regina and Henry’s relationship. “Your mom– Regina– the other Regina– she doesn’t talk about this for a reason.” 

 

“I know,” Henry says, scowling at her. “I don’t want to make her upset and ask her about all of this. But I need to _know_.” He looks up to the Queen hopefully again. “Can you tell me?” 

 

She taps a finger against her chin, considering. “Well, sometimes it was fun. Sometimes I was angry. No. Always.” They’re nearly at the park now, circling the little lake at its center and heading around again. “So many peasants flaunted the life Regina wanted in my face. So many of them despised me from the start. I gave them a reason to despise me.” She smiles, satisfied with herself. Emma watches Henry’s brow furrow and then smooth. “When you’re a woman in control of the mightiest kingdom of the Enchanted Forest, you’re forced to rule by fear, not love. Love is for Snow White with her convenient false prince of a husband.” She scoffs.

 

Henry watches her, fascinated, and Emma steers them to a bench where they can sit, the Queen beside Henry in her glittering dress as Emma drifts back and forth behind them, eagle-eyed. Passersby give them a wide berth, and she gets three calls from the station that she ignores. 

 

Finally, after a long minute of silence, Henry says, “You know that I can kill people, too? I don’t want to,” he says quickly. “I just…I have this pen, right? And I write people’s stories. I could…do anything to them.” He looks awestruck at his revelation, as though it’s the first time that he’s admitted it aloud. “I could make them change their minds or…or fix anything that’s wrong. It’s kind of cool.” 

 

The Queen nods, sliding an arm around his shoulder. “You’ve tasted that power,” she says approvingly. “You may even have more than me.”

 

“Yeah.” Emma watches him carefully, sees the flicker of uncertainty and hunger in his eyes, and she worries for the first time in a long time about what that pen might mean for Henry’s future. “What’s it like?” he asks tentatively, leaning against the Queen’s arm. “To be able to do whatever you want? Do you like it?” 

 

The Queen considers seriously, eyes sweeping over him as though she’s considering whether or not to lie to him. Emma waits on tenterhooks. “I do like it,” she decides. “Regina– when we were one, I think…I was often disappointed. It was never enough.” 

 

She smiles, catlike, vicious and unrestrained. Henry sits up again, shifting away from her. “I have no such compunctions. Come with me, dear,” she coos, eyes lighting up with the idea. “Wreak havoc through this new world with your pen and your mother.”

 

Emma takes a step forward, suddenly concerned. Regina’s definitely going to kick her ass after this. _Maybe during_ , she amends, twisting around and seeing a telltale movement in the woods. 

 

But Henry says, very politely, “No, thank you.” He smiles at her, a bit unsteady. “I was just…curious, you know? I needed to talk to someone about this.” The Queen looks only slightly disappointed, but her hand curls tighter around Henry’s shoulder and they fall into safer conversation.

 

And she’s good with him, mind-boggling as it is. She answers his questions with breezy honesty and Henry seems able to compartmentalize it all, nod and listen and absorb it just pieces of it. She gets angry a bit too quickly and Emma needs to intervene on several occasions; but at the end of the afternoon, Henry is smiling and he says to her, “She’s still kind of like Mom sometimes, isn’t she?” 

 

“Sometimes,” Emma says grudgingly, because the look that the EQ sends her way as she herds Henry out of the park is toe-curling and leaves no question about which very un-Regina-like thoughts she’s entertaining right now. “But be careful, okay? She’s…unpredictable sometimes. I want you to stay safe.” 

 

Henry scoffs. “Yeah, because _I’m_ the one who we should be worried about right now.” 

 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Emma says indignantly. Definitely not flushing. Very humiliated.

 

Henry smirks and heads into Granny’s without another word. Regina is behind him an instant later, appearing out of nowhere, and she gives Emma nothing more than a cool glare before she hurries to her son.

 

* * *

 

It’s not the silent treatment, exactly. Regina will still ask her to pass her things at the table or remind Emma to pick up Henry on her way home from work. They still go out patrolling for Hyde’s minions, though Zelena is the exasperated buffer between them now.

 

Mary Margaret has been glum lately, and Emma lingers around her to avoid Regina’s cool eyes when she can. “I don’t know why you’re upset that you’re _not_ being targeted by the Queen,” she says, patting her mother’s back reassuringly. “Wasn’t her main hobby attempting to murder you? This is progress.” 

 

Of course, it’s Regina in the end who can lift Mary Margaret’s spirits. “She goes after the people she believes she has unfinished business with,” Regina says briskly, avoiding Emma’s stare and focusing on Mary Margaret with steely certainty. “You and I have resolved all of that. I think…” She smiles at Mary Margaret, tremulous. “I think the parts of me that had hated you are the parts that love you now as well.” 

 

There’s a tearful hug and Emma averts her eyes, aching for Regina’s acknowledgement in a way that leaves her feeling petty and jealous. She sighs, exasperated with herself, and slips away from both of them and out of the house. 

 

She sees Regina in a mirror as she walks to the door, the other woman’s eyes boring into her back and angry and unreadable at once. _Fine_ , she thinks, irritable, and picks a fight with a few of Hyde’s minions just to knock them unconscious and stalk on.

 

She sees the Queen from afar, jeweled dress glittering in the moonlight as she saunters down the street, and she moves to her as though they're inexorably linked. “Fancy meeting you out here,” she says, raising her eyebrows at the other woman.

 

The Queen tilts her head. “You were looking for me,” she pronounces, eyeing her with curiosity. “Why?” 

 

Emma shrugs. “I was just…bored,” she finishes lamely. “I thought you might want to…” She can’t put a name on why it is that she’d sought out the Queen, and she falls silent.

 

“Seduce you?” the Queen suggests, amusement dancing in her eyes. “Isn’t that how it goes? You make eyes at Regina, and when you both remain woefully unsatisfied, you come to me to be seduced.” She trails fingers along the side of Emma’s jaw, letting them fall to her neck and graze her collarbone. “Well, if you insist…”

 

A part of Emma rebels at the implication. “I didn’t come to you to be seduced,” she retorts, glaring into the dark street in front of them. “I’m not…I don’t keep coming back to you because I want to sleep with you.” 

 

The Queen laughs, undeterred. “Don’t you?” She digs her nails into Emma’s collarbone and Emma trembles despite herself. “Why else would you want me?”

 

It’s the question everyone keeps asking, even if they don’t vocalize it. Mary Margaret is sure that she’s enchanted, despite her denials. Zelena looks at her with scorn and shudders at the thought of the Evil Queen. Even Henry gives her sidelong glances that are borderline judge-y. 

 

It’s harder to ignore the Queen like she does the rest of them. “I don’t know,” she admits. “Regina thinks that I have…some kind of innate need to have faith in you.” The Queen cackles. Emma gives her a cranky look. “Shut _up_. I know who you are.” 

 

“Do you?” 

 

Emma stares back into the dark street. “I was the Dark One, remember? I know what it’s like to…suddenly have all your worst impulses on display. And to be on the outside looking in, and to understand _why_ but still…” She shrugs unhappily. “You’re still _Regina_. I don’t want you to be isolated and lonely.”

 

“I’m not lonely,” the Queen says immediately, disdainful. “I don’t need your pity.” 

 

“It isn’t pity.” Emma struggles for a better term. “It’s…empathy. Okay?”

 

The Queen stares at her, visibly startled, and it takes a moment before she regains control and plasters a new smirk on her face. “So you’re insisting that you _don’t_ want me to seduce you?” 

 

Emma gulps in a breath. “I…here’s the thing,” she says, watching as the Queen’s tongue darts out to lick blood-red lips. “I’m really not opposed to that. Obviously. But–“

 

“Regina,” the Queen says crossly, dropping her hand. 

 

Emma swallows, already bereft at the loss. “Exactly–” 

 

“No, Regina is here,” the Queen says, scowling at a figure hurrying down the road toward them. “Why don’t you go wait for me in my vault?” 

 

“Wait–” But it’s too late. With a lazy hand-wave, Emma’s relegated to the vault before Regina can reach either of them.

 

“What have you done with her?” Regina’s voice rings out from behind her, and Emma twists around and sees that one of the large, square mirrors is displaying her best friend's face. Does the Queen have one on Regina at all times? She wouldn’t be surprised. 

 

The Queen sneers at her. “Somewhere far away from you, which is where she seems to be happiest.” 

 

“And you seem happiest taking everything away from me,” Regina growls. “Little trips to the park with Henry? This… _thing_ you keep flaunting with Emma? What the hell does pretending you care about any of them do for you?”

 

“Pretending I care about…Henry?” the Queen echoes, eyes narrowing. “You have the _audacity_ to imply that I don't–“

 

“I know you!” Regina snaps. “I _was_ you. I know you better than anyone. You can’t love. You can’t feel anything. This is all some…twisted punishment for me, isn’t it?” She wrings her hands, her eyes weary even as her voice grows angrier and angrier.

 

“Not everything is about you, _Regina_.” The Queen says her name with silky suggestion, enough that Emma can feel the seductiveness within it through the mirror. She can’t tear her eyes away from them– from Regina’s agitation or the Queen’s condescension– and she presses her fingers against her knees and holds her breath as Regina tosses her hair back in disdain.

 

“Everything you do is.” She laughs bitterly. “You’ve never cared about anyone but yourself. Which is… _us_ , now.” 

 

The Queen’s eyes flash, a flicker of Regina’s fury reflected within them. “That’s what I was there for, wasn’t it?” she says darkly. “I was always your protector. I existed to take care of you when no one else in the world would. I _cherished_ you and kept you strong and you…discarded me like last week’s garbage.” Every word drips with anger, with hurt, with so much pain that even Regina’s defensiveness is diluted with guilt and shame. “How dare you.” 

 

“You’ve been a menace,” Regina says, her head bowed. “I fought you every day of my life.” 

 

“You needed me. You still need me,” the Queen says sharply. “You say…you say I’m not _Regina_ , that I’m a separate, incomplete entity.” She steps forward, eyes glittering, and Regina’s hands move up to catch the Queen’s wrists as her hands fall onto Regina’s hips. “But if I’m not Regina, then how can you ever be her, either?” 

 

Regina stands very still, the Queen’s hands possessive on her hips and her lips close enough to kiss. Her eyes are wide and vulnerable, regrets swimming within them, and the Queen’s face is a mirror of her own.

 

When they’re together, it’s harder and harder to tell where they begin and where they end, which pieces of Regina each of them possess. Emma watches them with fascination and more than a little longing for them both. “Please,” Regina whispers, her hands sliding up the Queen’s arms, thumbs brushing along jewels and satin and a hard-ridged collar. “Please leave Emma out of this.” 

 

She hesitates at the collar, at the expanse of skin exposed from the Queen’s neck to her chest, and she splays one hand over it. The Queen shivers, a barely visible tremor that has Emma gaping at the mirror. “I don’t answer to you anymore,” she breathes, and Regina pulls away from her with a sharp, angry movement.

 

She twists her hand in a familiar movement, pre-fireball, and Emma reacts in a surge of magic. She’s standing between them a moment later, a hand on one of Regina’s arms and one of the Queen’s. “Let’s just go home, Regina,” she pleads, and the Queen mutters something darkly and glides away.

 

Regina doesn’t talk to her on the way home. She doesn’t reach for her when they’re in bed together anymore, just huddles on her side with her back to Emma; and Emma lies still and watches her, miserable at the rejection.

 

* * *

 

She starts patrolling alone again during her night shifts, leaving David in the house while she fights off Hyde’s minions. Regina still isn’t talking to her, and she knows it’s about the Queen but she’s also unwilling to let her go entirely. 

 

So _what_ if she’s working with Hyde now. No matter what Regina seems to think of her, she cares about Henry and she seems to like Emma and there’s no way that her alliance with Hyde is anything more than a temporary distraction. The Queen is more on her side than _Regina_ is these days, so–

 

She quashes that thought before it explodes into something more worrisome. She isn’t going to give up on Regina just because Regina seems to have given up on her. Regina’s stood by her through much worse and Emma’s going to give her the same courtesy. 

 

It’s just…complicated now, Emma concedes, and she’s glad when she bumps into a half-dozen ghostlings. She swings axes, probably hands out a few concussions, and she swings a sword with all her might, desperate to get out some kind of stress relief after days of being submerged in stressors.

 

She’s gained the upper hand in the fight, exhilarated and distracted from her thoughts for a moment, when the final ghostling suddenly keels over in front of her, solidifying as a hook protrudes from his stomach.

 

“Oh,” she says, still bristling with unrelieved tension. “You.” 

 

“Thought you could use a hand,” Killian says, preening as he kicks the ghostling. He steps over him, eyeing Emma with a hard stare. “So. Sharing Regina’s bed now, are you?” 

 

“David talks too much,” Emma mutters, her cheeks pink. “It’s platonic.” 

 

“Was it ever?” Killian paces around the fallen ghostlings, dark and brooding and an accusatory tone. “The more I look back at our time together, the more I see that this latest twist wasn’t a twist at all.” 

 

Emma stands her ground. “That’s not fair. I gave you everything I could– _more_ than that. I would have done _anything_ to keep you safe with me.” She remembers it like a bad dream, like looking back on past years and shuddering at how many mistakes she’d made. Bit by bit, each step of her relationship with Killian is beginning to look like a mistake.

 

And Killian must see it in her eyes. “But you wanted Regina all through that time,” he accuses.

 

“Maybe,” Emma concedes. “I don’t know. I don’t think I knew until…until the Evil Queen waltzed into our kitchen,” she admits. It’s a bit of an exaggeration. Regina has always been the culmination of  _almost–_ for her. They’d never quite been everything they could be, but Emma had always kind of _wondered_ , entertained the thought of them being something more and then shrugged it off guiltily, and the Evil Queen had only opened the door a little wider. 

 

Killian studies her and then sighs. “Losing to Regina may have been all right,” he mutters. “But the Evil Queen? What could she possibly have to offer?” He’s whining now, voice pitched high and demanding, and Emma turns away from him.

 

“It’s complicated,” she offers, and she’s relieved when she sees the Queen herself approaching from a distance. “Look, I’ve got to go. But maybe we can…I don’t know, do coffee sometime? As friends,” she says hastily. “I think we can be friends.”

 

“I’d like that.” Killian’s reply is calmer, and this is pretty painless a resolution, as far as breakups go. It hadn’t ended with her in jail, anyway, so progress. 

 

Emma flashes him a quick smile, then jogs out to the Queen. “Hi.” 

 

“Emma,” the Queen drawls. “Back to making nice with the pirate?” 

 

Emma rolls her eyes at her, reading the jealousy in her voice. “Behave. It was just…a polite conversation.” 

 

“I’m sure. I know your idea of–“ The Queen stops speaking, her eyes bulging out as she twists around and hurls a wave of magic. “How dare you,” she snarls, freezing her attacker in place. 

 

His hook is still raised toward her back. “I won’t be made a fool of,” Killian hisses, the dark look back in his eyes. He laughs, eyes flicking to Emma without an iota of regret in his eyes, and she takes a step back. “I’ll see you for coffee?” 

 

The Queen flings out a hand and Killian is thrown into the air, scrabbling helplessly at his throat as he chokes for breath. With her other hand, she summons a fireball, hurling it lazily at Killian.

 

Emma throws out her own hand just in time, freezing the fireball in place. Killian crashes to the ground as the Queen gapes at Emma. “Regina, no!”

 

“I’m not Regina!” the Queen shoots back. “I’m not going to stand by and let your boy-toy attempt to _murder_ me and then forgive him for it!”

 

“And I’m not going to stand by and let you kill someone!” She feels a new shiver of revulsion when she sees Killian on the floor, glaring up at the Queen with unrestrained loathing. “That’s what the cells at the station are for. That’s what _I’m_ here for.” She remembers Regina with the same fire in her eyes–  _Emma, you’re better than this–_ as she’d held a gun to Lily. 

 

This Regina doesn’t think twice about it, and Emma can’t remind her that she isn’t like this when she _is_ , but she won’t compromise who she is for the Evil Queen. “I am the sheriff of this town,” she says, moving between Killian and the Queen. “I don’t– I have a responsibility to follow the laws of this world, not yours.”

 

“Out of my way,” the Queen orders, and Emma draws her own energy to herself as well as she can manage, squinting in the bright light that emanates from her hands. The Queen stares at her in disbelief. “All this for _him_? Don’t tell me you still love him.” She sounds miffed, almost hurt.

 

Emma’s ears are pounding, her eyes burning from the light of her magic. “I’d do the same for anyone,” she says honestly. Whatever leftover emotions she still has for Killian, they’re nowhere near what she feels for Regina, but that doesn’t matter here.  “I’m the savior. I can’t let you set everyone who wants to kill you on fire! That’s the whole town!”

 

“Then they all shall burn,” the Queen pronounces, and she draws a flaming purple ball of energy and hurls it at Killian.

 

Emma steps in front of it without a second thought, the magic blasting toward her and exploding on contact with her own magical energy. She’s thrown through the air– there’s a shout of _EMMA!_ high and exasperated and strained– and she lands with a thump somewhere behind the Queen, her side aching. 

 

She can’t bear to turn around and watch the Queen again, see her snuff out another life with the same carelessness as she’d killed the ghostlings. Instead, she crumples on the ground, staring bleakly into the darkness. She’d thought the Queen had been…tractable, at least. Agreeable, and more connected to the good guys than she’d ever been as a fairytale monster. But that’s her unfortunate tendency to believe too much in Regina, in any form.

 

A flash of magic illuminates the street for a instant, and then deafening silence. 

 

Emma sags, squeezing her eyes shut and refusing to process any of this just yet. She doesn’t move from her spot, listens to the click of the Queen’s heels as she comes to a halt behind Emma, waits for explanations that never arrive.

 

Instead, there’s a chitter from behind her and a little brown rat with a metallic-looking front leg skitters past her.

 

Emma blinks, standing up at last and groaning at sore muscles from the fall. “Is that…?” 

 

“It’s temporary,” the Queen says grudgingly. “Should wear off after a week or two, then you can…lock him up in your cells. Are you happy now?” Her tone is belligerent, but there’s a hitch in it that has Emma twisting around to stare at her.

 

“You didn’t kill him,” she says wonderingly.

 

The Queen grimaces. “Don’t expect me to be as gracious next time,” she threatens, and Emma can’t tell if the darker flush of her cheeks is from exhilaration or embarrassment.

 

She’s seized with so much fondness for the Queen at that moment: a breathless understanding that _yes_ , she’d chosen _Emma_ instead of caving to her own instincts or the vengeance that had characterized so much of her transformation into the Evil Queen. The Queen’s eyes are gleaming with affection as Emma draws closer, the fury gone and forgotten, and she smiles. 

 

Emma intertwines her fingers with the Queen’s, bringing them up together to her cheek. “Thank you, Regina,” she murmurs.

 

“I’m not Regina,” the Queen mutters, and there’s a note of warning behind the grudging acceptance. Emma leans forward, her knuckles moving against the Queen’s skin as her jaw works, and she presses a gentle kiss to the Queen’s lips. Her lips curve upward against the Queen’s mouth, her hand still resting comfortably in the Queen’s, and this is…maybe… 

 

The Queen stares at her, her gaze almost mournful as it had been when Regina had first turned her to dust, and she says, “It’s a shame, really.” 

 

“What is?” Emma asks, frowning, and then something slams into the back of her head and everything goes dark.

 

* * *

 

She’s bound to a chair and her magic isn’t working. Those are the first two things she discovers, before she opens her eyes. She isn’t gagged and she isn’t in pain beyond some tenderness from the blow that had knocked her out. And she’s still alive.

 

She opens her eyes and takes in the woman standing opposite her. “Regina,” she says, and the defeat settles in her stomach like a stone.

 

The Queen scowls at her, that warning note loud as a clanging alarm now. “What more is it going to take for you to understand that I’m _not Regina_?” She turns in a whirl of fabric and paces up and down through the…laboratory. They’re in Hyde’s laboratory in Storybrooke, in the space where Gold’s shop once had been. 

 

“You’re still working with Hyde,” Emma says blankly. Regina had reminded her of it– had reminded her that the Queen would betray her– and she’d shrugged it off because she _knows_ Regina, knows her lightest sides and her darkest…

 

Apparently not. “I thought…I thought you were trying with us.” 

 

“ _Trying_?” The Queen laughs scornfully. “Did you think I’d be satisfied as a shadow, hovering in the sidelines and locked away in a vault? Did you think I’d play house with you and my son and send you home to Regina at the end of the day?” There’s something _off_ about the way she talks now, her words tinged with a madness that masks something else. Emma studies her, hard-eyed and hurt and despairing. “This is _my_ town. I built it. I killed and subjugated and destroyed for it. And I will take it again by force,” the Queen bites out.

 

“Not if we don’t get Regina out of the way.” Emma hadn’t noticed Hyde in the room until he speaks up. He hangs back in the corner, flanked by ghostlings, and he watches them both with narrowed eyes. “You told me you could bring me them both if I gave you what you needed.” 

 

“Must I explain it again to your dim little brain?” The Queen smiles without any mirth. “All we need for that is Swan. Capture one of them, and the other will follow. It’s only a matter of time.” 

 

Emma’s heart beats furiously against her ribs. _Regina_. Regina’s going to come for her, no matter how much they’ve fought lately. This is a trap, and Regina’s going to walk right into it. “And then what?” she demands, swallowing back her panic. “What the hell can you possibly gain by ruling Storybrooke? Extra paperwork? That great parking spot at Town Hall?” 

 

The Queen chuckles darkly. “Did you think I was playing at family these past days?” She glides toward Emma’s chair. Emma can feel her proximity like a live wire, setting every nerve aflame as she leans down. “I will take my son and let him live to the fullest of his potential.” Her hand cups Emma’s cheek, still so gentle and so _Regina_ that Emma wants to sob and scream. “And I will take you, to rule by my side.”

 

_No. Never._ “You really have lost your mind if you think that I’d ever–“

 

“Well. Not _you_ , per se.” The Queen brushes her lips across Emma’s and Emma forces herself to remain completely still, her chin tilted upward as the Queen’s thumb presses painfully against it. “I think it’s clear from tonight that I’ll have to make some…modifications.” 

 

It’s only then that Emma sees Hyde approaching, sees the syringe in his hand. “That’s–“ 

 

“Diluted serum, I’m afraid,” Hyde says sleekly. “We’ve been running low since we lost the good doctor. This will take a while. And be excruciatingly painful.” He smiles thinly. “A token of my appreciation after your fun with my minions these past weeks.” He moves closer, past the Queen, and presses the syringe to her arm.

 

“No. No!” Emma thrashes against her bonds, strains helplessly and smashes her head against Hyde’s. “No, Regina, please–“ 

 

The wall explodes. The Queen springs forward, only a flicker of surprise before she’s back in action, and Hyde uses Emma’s distraction to depress the plunger and inject the serum into her vein.

 

She screams. It burns in her veins, sends waves of pain through her as it travels up her arm, and she can feel something erupting in her stomach. Her heart is pounding and her whole body feels as though it’s about to be violently riven in two. _Oh, god_. “Regina!” she cries out again, and there’s a flash of energy, shattered glass flying toward her, and then a blur of magic as she’s protected from it.

 

“I’m here.” Regina’s voice sounds, clear and terse, and it’s the first time in days that Emma can breathe. “I’m here, Emma.” 

 

Emma seizes onto that voice, grasps it with all of her might through the agony, and squints through the energy around her to see two figures standing opposite each other. The Queen’s face is bright with victory, and Regina is bound with her own magic, standing as still as a corpse. “This was your big plan?” Regina demands, her voice hoarse. “You’re going to take Emma apart and…keep the bits that suit you?” 

 

“It’s what you did to me, isn’t it?” The Queen saunters back to Emma, stroking her cheek with a finger that Emma can’t feel. No– oh god– it’s not _her_ cheek anymore. Someone cool and pale stares back at her with cruel eyes. She feels malice running through her, feels the vicious selfishness and attraction to the Queen as vividly as she does betrayal and revulsion. She’s too much at once, too many _people_ , and she’s struggling to get her bearings, to break free of this disorientation and–

 

No. She can’t break free. She has to– to stay together, to keep herself from being split down the middle irreparably, and she struggles against her bonds as Regina speaks rapidly. “It won’t work,” Regina says rapidly. She isn’t struggling, but her eyes are on Emma with growing horror. “You can’t just…take inconvenient chunks of her essence and expect her to be the same. You know that. _We_ know that,” she says beseechingly, her head dropping in defeat.

 

“No,” the Queen says, and Emma thinks vaguely that the edge of madness in her voice might just be hysteria. “I’m not _you_. I don’t lose! I don’t _choose_ the pathetic, sniveling family that you’ve settled down with. I take what I want and I want–“

 

“Emma. You want Emma,” Regina whispers, and Emma yearns for her with every agony-filled, dividing part of herself. “As fascinating as you might find her darker side, it isn’t what drew you to her in the first place.” The Queen is distracted, eyes racing back from Regina to Emma and then back to Regina again, and Regina’s magic bindings loosen just enough for her to reach out to touch the Queen’s hand. “Please,” she whispers, eyes as agonized as Emma’s whole body is right now, and the Queen looks…

 

…almost ashamed, almost protective as she’d been with bloody hands in front of a weeping Regina. Regina now might be crying, too, but Emma can’t see anything more through the pain, not until there’s a movement beside her and the Queen is raising–

 

–a sword, why is there a sword, why is she crashing it down onto Emma, hasn’t she done enough–

 

–blood everywhere, all over Emma, and her mind is hazy as she watches thick red blood with magic flowing through it–

 

–she reaches to touch it and _where’s her hand, where’s her arm, what’s happened to–_

 

This time, when her vision goes grey and then black, it’s a lot slower. It hurts a lot more, too.

 

* * *

 

She wakes up in a bed, and everything still smells like blood. Dried blood, she thinks absentmindedly, staring at the brown-stained sleeve of her jacket. Her fingers twitch against the roughened fabric, and she stares down at them. “I thought the Queen cut my arm off.” 

 

“We reattached it,” Regina says from beside her. She’s– they’re in Regina’s bedroom, Emma propped up against the headboard with pillows and Regina seated beside her. “Fixed your jacket, too. I can try getting the blood out of it once you get changed.” 

 

“I…I’m alive,” Emma says stupidly. “Is there another me?” She doesn’t feel different, just worn out and still betrayed and hurt. 

 

“No,” Regina says. “She… Severing your arm cut out most of the serum before it could spread through your body. The rest drained out with the blood. She saved you.” She turns to the chaise lounge in the corner, and Emma realizes for the first time that the Queen is sitting there, staring out the window. She doesn’t turn to look at them, which is probably for the best. Emma doesn’t know what she’d do if she had to talk to the Queen right now.

 

“She did this to me,” she says instead, and she remembers this anger well. “She was manipulating me all along.” 

 

“She's never been very good at manipulation,” Regina says, reluctant and tight-lipped about it. “She’d rather– we’d both rather– brute force and intimidation instead. No patience for long games when we can broadcast all our anger instead.” She rubs a reassuring hand against Emma’s back.

 

Emma doesn’t feel very reassured. “Is that why you’ve been giving me the cold shoulder? Because you’ve been…broadcasting your anger?” 

 

Regina’s hand stills. “Emma…” 

 

And she’s so tired of all of this, of all of them orbiting each other with agendas they’re afraid to share and being left in the cold because of it. Regina had been right. The Queen had betrayed her. And she’s avoided broaching the topic until now, but she can’t stand the thought of more unsaid words after tonight. “I know you think that I…I don’t know, that I chose her over you,” Emma murmurs, and Regina inhales and lets her speak. “I didn’t. She’s still…” 

 

It’s Emma’s turn to pause, to stare at the Queen’s stiff back and blink back tears. “I love _Regina_ , you know?” _An almost_. She’s always felt too much, fought too hard, and dwelled on Regina long before they’d ever become friends. There’s always been something indefinable for her in Regina, something that steals her breath away even now and has her head pounding like she’s two miles deep in the ocean, and naming it now staggers even her. She tears her eyes away and meets Regina’s wide ones instead. “And it was always okay that you didn’t feel the same–“ 

 

“Emma–“ Regina says hoarsely, and Emma hurries on before she’s thrown out of the room, before more tension and embarrassment and rejection. 

 

“It was okay and I knew it was never going to happen. But she _did_ want me. And she’s Regina, too. There’s still so much of you in her– of the whole Regina who I fell in love with–“ Regina is shaking her head, reaching out to her, and Emma forces her gaze away from her and back to the Queen. “Of course I wanted to be around her. I always want to be around Regina.”

 

The Queen sits rigidly, shoulders still and hands together on her lap. Emma gulps in a breath. “Of course I wanted to…” She can see Regina in her peripheral vision, shifting toward her, and she thinks Regina might forgive her after all. “There was no _enchantment_. I wanted…” 

 

She looks up at Regina again, desperate for her to understand, and Regina lays a hand on her shoulder and kisses her. 

 

Regina kisses with the gentleness that her other half had been lacking, the affection clear in every movement of their lips against each other and her hand still light on Emma’s shoulder. Emma lets her eyes drift closed, tugs Regina closer after a moment of bewildered amazement and wraps her in her arms. It’s not passionate in the same way as the Queen’s kiss had been, not overwhelming and ferociously nonstop. It’s delicate emotion so evocative that Emma tastes it in every breath against her lips, in their foreheads pressed together as they breathe hard, in the careful way that Regina tastes the curve of her neck and hums against the skin. 

 

Emma wants to sob. Emma wants to curl against Regina and kiss her like this for hours, to find the rhythm between Regina’s two halves that makes them complete and makes _her_ complete. Emma is swept away to sea, every tiny touch another crashing wave that takes her breath away. Emma wants to lose herself for eternity in Regina’s embrace. 

 

Instead, Emma grazes a thumb against the back of Regina’s neck and raises her face to watch the Queen still seated on the chaise lounge.

 

She’s finally turned around, just enough to see their reflections in the vanity mirror. From her angle, she can’t see Emma looking back at her, and there’s an unguarded expression on her face of raw, naked desire. 

 

The Queen turns away again. Her spine is stiff, her arms are folded, and her tense profile is silhouetted against the moonlight as Regina sinks deeper into Emma’s embrace. And Emma doesn’t know which of them she’d been staring at before she’d turned away.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> took a while, but here we are with a very lengthy final chapter! please do heed the rating and pairings listed above. y'all thought i was _kidding_ , bYE.

“He has only one vial of serum remaining.” 

 

“Not the one he used on Emma?” 

 

“He split it in half and diluted it. Half for Emma, half for…” The Evil Queen hesitates.

 

“Henry,” Emma says flatly. They’re back in the vault, Emma and Regina on a couch as the Queen paces in front of them. Emma’s arm is casually slung over Regina’s shoulders, Regina’s fingers delicately twining and untwining between the hand at her shoulder, and the Queen glowers deeper and deeper with every glance at them.

 

Emma’s still just angry enough not to care. “You were going to split Henry, just like you tried with me. Is that next on the agenda? You run back to Hyde for another try at the serum?” 

 

Regina excels at eyes that fade into blankness, a hole of emptiness where there’d only been pain before. The Queen isn’t capable of anything but sharpness– sharp humor, sharp affection, sharp hatred and rage– and she looks at Emma with all of them at once. Emma stiffens. The Queen says, “We have deeper issues than that. Hyde had his minions tailing me during the day, as well. He knows that Henry is the author and what he can do. That serum isn’t just leverage anymore.” 

 

Regina’s eyes are stormy dark. “You led him to Henry?” she demands furiously. “You _idiot_.” 

 

“I didn’t think it’d be a problem,” the Queen drawls, sneering down at them. “I thought I’d have my Dark Swan by my side and we’d finish the sideburned cockroach off together. We’ll have to work around that now.” Long nails tap against her folded arm impatiently.

 

Emma says, fed up. “You could sound a little sorrier about what you did to me, you know.”

 

“I’m not.” The Queen stares at her, an eyebrow cocked and her face utterly guileless. 

 

Emma pauses, baffled, and it’s Regina who speaks up. “You don’t feel any remorse for what you’ve done?” Her voice is irritable, but there’s a note of real jealousy within it that has Emma sitting up again and blinking at Regina. 

 

“Why should I?” The Queen sounds genuinely puzzled. “It’s been fixed. I saved Emma, and now we’ll finish Hyde off together. Why should I waste time with regrets?” 

 

“Why should you–“ Emma gapes at her. Regina is still staring with mingled annoyance and wistfulness. “Why should you _waste time_? You tried to– You– You–“ She’s sputtering, wordless in the face of the Queen’s indifference. “You’re a psychopath!”

 

There’s a flash of anger in the Queen’s eyes, followed by the same indifference again. Emma balls her fists and stands, Regina’s hand trailing against her back warningly. 

 

They need the Queen. They can’t pick fights and turn against each other when Henry is a target. But Emma’s a contained mass of hurt and fury and betrayal still, and somehow it still hurts just as acutely when she has another Regina in her arms. “I thought…” She shuts her eyes and opens them again, holding the Queen’s gaze in her fierce one. “You were going to split me in two and cut out all the pieces that you wanted. I thought that you of all people wouldn’t…I thought you understood.” She ducks her head, humiliated at her own hurt taking precedence, and Regina’s fingers skitter and stop and then begin again to drift across her back in a comforting caress. 

 

When she raises her face again, it’s to the Queen struggling as though to break through a fog that constricts her emotions; as though there’s something more there that she can’t quite access even when she’s trying. “I do. I did.” She looks frustrated, and Emma softens despite herself. “I just…I didn’t have a plan otherwise.” 

 

“You don’t have the planning gene either, huh?” She tosses a triumphant look back at Regina, who wipes a stricken expression from her face in favor of an indulgent smile.

 

“I won’t rest on my laurels, whining, until my enemy takes the initiative,” the Queen tosses out scornfully, eyeing her other half. Regina rolls her eyes. “I had to do _something_.” 

 

“It was a shitty thing to do,” Emma says, scowling at her.

 

“Yes,” the Queen concedes, and then she clears her throat. “Nevertheless, Henry.” She starts pacing again, circling the couch where Regina is still sitting, and Emma stands back and watching her movements around Regina with a furrowed brow. “We need to kill Hyde at once.” 

 

“No,” Regina says at once. They both look at her askance. She says patiently, “We have to find the serum first. I’m not leaving that for anyone else to use. Did Hyde keep it on him?” 

 

“Of course not. He couldn’t risk me taking it from him.” 

 

“Then it’s back in the Land of Untold Stories.” 

 

“We’ll need a–“

 

“–Portal, obviously, but between the three of us–“ 

 

“And double the magic,” both Reginas say at once, identical smirks of satisfaction on their faces. 

 

Emma gapes at them. They turn to her, brows furrowing, and Emma says hastily, “It’s nothing. Um…so is there a portal handy?” 

 

“It’s a specialty of Zelena’s,” Regina offers. She glances back at the Queen, the exhilaration fading from her eyes. “I don’t know how willing she’ll be to help us.” 

 

The Queen scoffs. “Don’t be absurd, she’s your precious big sister. Of course she’ll help you.” Her lip curls, distaste written across her face, and Regina purses her lips and turns away from the Queen, whatever peace had settled over her gone in an instant.

 

And Zelena _does_ help them without question, erecting a portal and muttering an accusing, “You’re going to trust her?” to Regina when the Queen saunters over to Henry across the backyard. Emma watches them for a moment, their heads close together and the Queen with a hand on Henry’s chin as they talk. Henry looks up at her without any doubt, and Emma sighs and turns back to Regina and Zelena.

 

“We don’t have a choice,” Regina is saying tiredly. “We can’t leave her here without us, and I don’t think she’s leading us into a trap. I know how she lies, and she’s telling the truth now.” She squeezes Zelena’s hand, her voice hoarse. “I’m not– I don’t want you to think–“

 

Zelena doesn’t wait for the affirmation or whatever apology Regina might offer to her, and Emma is surprised and gratified when she squeezes Regina’s hand just as hard. “Go,” she says quietly. “I’ll watch over Henry.” She pulls Regina into an easy embrace and Emma averts her eyes automatically, separating from them to join Henry and the Queen instead.

 

The Queen is speaking in low tones and Emma’s eyes narrow, unwilling to offer her the benefit of the doubt right now. She takes a step closer, tensing for a fight, and Regina catches her elbow before she can move any closer and says, “Come with me.” 

 

They walk around the side of the house, Henry’s eyes following them curiously and the Queen’s eyes dark again. Emma is still bewildered but longing, her eyes on Regina’s back as Regina leads the way, and she doesn’t know what’s going on except that she’d follow Regina anywhere. 

 

It feels a bit like there’s a thread between them now, holding them taut when Emma tries to move away, and she can’t help– even through a crisis– but be pulled along with it to Regina. She finds that she doesn’t mind it at all.

 

And the thread relaxes entirely when Regina pauses under the living room window on the front lawn and slides her arms around Emma. Emma lurches forward at once, wraps tight arms around Regina in turn, inhales her scent and buries her face in Regina’s neck. Regina kisses the top of her head and holds her flush against her, and it feels so good to sag– to stop standing tall for a moment and be wrapped in an embrace that demands nothing and is warm and simple and good.

 

She doesn’t want to let go. She presses her lips to Regina’s neck and feels her shudder and slips a hand under Regina’s blouse to stroke the soft skin beneath. But there’s a serum to find and a villain to defeat, and she sighs heavily and lets Regina disentangle from her, her face glowing as she looks up at Emma. “You know you don’t have to get huffy when I hug other people anymore, right?” Regina says, mischief dancing in her eyes.

 

Emma quirks an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you dragged me away from everyone else just to say _that_.” 

 

“Well, no,” Regina concedes. “I also wanted to do this.” She smoothes flyaway hairs from Emma’s face and presses a kiss to her lips. Emma deepens the kiss, Regina breathing hard as one kiss morphs into dozens of little ones, teasing at lips and tongue and teeth and then along Emma’s jawline to her earlobe.

 

It feels like Regina’s all she’s been waiting for; like  _oh, there you are_ and the peace of coming home. It feels like she’s tangled in that invisible thread now, it wound around them over and over again and Emma with no desire to escape it. 

 

It feels like it should be utterly fulfilling, and Emma hates herself a little bit for instead picking up on what’s missing– the gaps in Regina that, in her dreams of this moment, had never been left so empty.

 

* * *

 

They emerge in a bustling marketplace where no one blinks twice at them appearing out of thin air. “The Land of Untold Stories,” Regina says, frowning around the square. “I’d have expected a bit less sepia.” 

 

“I liked the Enchanted Forest more, and that had ogres,” Emma says. She squints at the markets around them, crowds of people congregating at entrances and exits and no sign of any specific ghostlings that might tip her off. It’s raining, the stone beneath them slippery and the skies grey, and oddly shaped cliffs with castles built onto them loom in the distance. 

 

“There,” the Queen says suddenly, pointing to a mansion that rises above the cityscape behind Emma. An airship is departing from it, floating toward a tower on one of the cliffs. 

 

“You think that’s the house that Zelena was talking about?” Emma eyes it, frowning. “I don’t think that’s Hyde’s base of operations. It’s too close to town.” She stares at the tower speculatively, then studies the mansion again, casing it out with the eye of a professional thief. _Ex-thief_. 

 

“She’s right,” the Queen says. “This isn’t a city under subjugation.” She smiles with satisfaction. “I know subjugation.” Regina’s jaw works under her skin. “Follow the airship, then.” 

 

“We get the serum. Then what?” 

 

“We cut Hyde off from his portal. No more ghostlings,” Regina decides.

 

“And we kill any in our way,” the Queen says serenely.

 

Regina glares at her. “No more killing.” 

 

The Queen laughs, unimpressed. “You know, when I got back to Storybrooke, I was surprised that you hadn’t defeated an enemy as weak as Hyde. But you’re even weaker, aren’t you? You’d quail with sentimentality before you crushed a single heart.” 

 

“I crushed yours just fine,” Regina says, bristling, and Emma hurries between them again. 

 

“Okay! Okay. Let’s just…head to that tower. See if we can find the serum there." Emma sucks in a breath. “We’ll do whatever we have to to stop Hyde, but let’s avoid hurting ghostlings where we can. They’re not in control of their actions. Deal?” 

 

It’s like supervising two squabbling children, each diametrically opposed to the other. Regina looks smug and the Queen scowls, and Emma pinches the bridge of her nose and says, “Okay, tower,” and refuses to look at either of them.

 

She pretends not to notice that Regina is significantly closer to her when they reappear in front of the tower than she’d been when they’d teleported from the marketplace. The Queen doesn’t pretend, of course. “You’ll never be enough for her,” she mutters snidely, sauntering forward and slipping a possessive hand onto Emma’s ass. Emma jerks away, glaring at her. “Do you think you can make her come when you’ve got the passion of a dying toad?”

 

Regina’s eyes narrow. “I’m sure a brutal murderer whispering sweet nothings in Emma's ears will really get her blood running,” she shoots back. 

 

“Oh, my god.” Emma resists the urge to throw her hands in the air. “Both of you, _stop_. If I'd wanted posturing on a mission, I’d buy a mousetrap and go find Hook.” Both of the other women sneer, but Regina, at least, looks chastened. Emma gestures at the bolted door to the tower, where ghostling guards are drifting in front of them, watching warily. “Let’s just go,” she says, defeated.

 

For all their bickering, the Queen and Regina both are nothing if not efficient when it comes to dispatching enemies. There’s the same rush when the three of them combine their magic, a blow with enough power behind it to knock out even magic-resistant ghostlings. Emma can feel exhilaration singing through her veins with the Queen on one side and Regina on the other, their energy together bright and hot and vibrant.

 

“Through the doors,” Regina orders breathlessly as the bolts on the door disintegrate. “Let’s get the serum and get out of here.” 

 

The Queen sweeps in without an ounce of caution as Regina and Emma creep in warily behind her. “Whoa,” Emma says, staring at the room around them. It’s bare, but for a few ghostlings they stop with ease. It’s also the diameter of the entire tower. There’s a long glass pillar at the center of the room that stretches to the height of the tower, as far as Emma can see, and a winding staircase that wraps around it. Each floor above them is a few feet smaller than the one below it, and they float like translucent circular discs above them. 

 

But the real surprise of the room is the walls themselves. They’re mirrored, though there’s no sign of any breaks or tiles in the mirrors. It’s just one long, curved mirror that stretches up to the top of the tower, reflecting their openmouthed stares again and again and again across the mirror in front of them and behind them. 

 

“Disorienting,” the Queen comments, frowning. “Don’t look at the mirrors.” 

 

Regina says, her voice bouncing off the walls, “There’s something at the top of the tower.” Emma joins her at the wall, staring up past the shrinking floors to the topmost level. Hovering above it is a portal, writhing and flickering with unnatural light, and as they watch, it sucks in a ghostling at the edge of the platform in a burst of energy. 

 

“So that’s where Hyde’s getting his army from,” Emma says. She glances across the room to where the Queen is pacing, inspecting the staircase and pursing her lips with impatience. “You helped him with this, didn’t you?” It’s accusing, the resentment still simmering in her belly when she watches the unbothered Queen.

 

“I expanded it on the other end, yes,” the Queen concedes. “It opens up within the author’s mansion. He’s claimed that for himself as well as Rumple’s pawn shop.” She raises her eyebrows at them. “Are you going to keep gawping up at the portal like a pair of imbeciles or are we hunting for this serum?” 

 

Emma grits her teeth and stalks up the staircase first, ignoring the Queen’s snicker and reaching for Regina again once she hits the first platform; the thread between them going taut with distance. The Queen comes up first, like static that sends the thread flying in different directions, and Emma turns away from her and stares at the mirrors on the wall instead.

 

This platform is mostly empty as well. There’s an odd-looking machine on the opposite end of it, a post to be manned by the ghostlings, but it’s the mirrors past them that have Emma blinking at her reflection. It’s…

 

A dirty-faced girl of perhaps seven or eight stares back at her, yellow hair flat and eyes defiant. Emma _knows_ her, has seen her in photos she can’t bear to look at too often, and she swallows and says, “These mirrors are magic, I think.” 

 

The Queen isn’t a queen when she emerges from the stairwell. She’s another angry-looking girl, a few years older than Emma’s reflection but with that matching defiance in her eyes, and as they both gape at the mirror, the young Emma in the mirror turns to stare at the young Regina warily. 

 

Another figure appears behind them, ascending until she’s taller than them both. It’s undoubtedly Regina again but closer to her late teens than a child, her eyes dark and sad and a circlet resting on her hair. She moves in the mirror until she’s standing beside the two girls, and she kneels down beside the little Emma and rests a hand on her cheek. The little Emma’s eyes soften, smiling a wavering smile at her, and the older Regina’s eyes sparkle.

 

“Why is it…” Emma clears her throat. There’s something heavy and large within it, making it difficult to speak or swallow. “Why is it doing this?” 

 

“I don’t know.” The Queen is glaring at her younger self as though displeased to see her at all. The younger Regina glares back. “Funhouse mirrors. Twisted nonsense.”

 

The young Emma turns from Teen Regina and steps over to the younger Regina, touching her arm tentatively. The younger Regina turns to look at her instead and the teenaged Regina moves protectively behind them and Emma can’t watch them anymore. Her heart stinging when she breathes, she says gruffly, “We should keep going.” 

 

“Yes,” Regina says, and she’s staring at her reflection with the same sadness that had been in her teenaged self’s eyes. She manages a short smile. “You’ve got more than enough Reginas to deal with already.” 

 

“Just enough, actually,” Emma murmurs, and Regina’s eyes are unreadable again. 

 

The next floor features them all anew. Regina’s reflection is the Evil Queen in all her glory, but the Queen’s reflection is the bandit Regina that Emma had met in the author’s new story. Emma as the Dark One stands between them, eyes hungry and cold, and the Queen curls her lip in distaste and pushes a ghostling charging at them off the platform.

 

Each floor is another spat with ghostlings; another machine or desk or post that gives them no information at all; and another trio of reflections. In one, Emma is a baby that the Evil Queen snatches up. In another, a tiny Regina with flowers in her hair hugs an identical Regina in rags to her. 

 

But most of them are similar enough. There are too many of Regina as a queen and Regina as mayor; too many of Emma with swords and guns and the darting eyes of a thief; too many of Regina’s reflections that are only Regina herself, the one Emma knows and loves, and too many Evil Queens who are terrible and horrifying and magnificent. Sometimes they all fight. Sometimes they stand close. In every one, they have minds of their own and pay little heed to the women who’d somehow brought them forth.

 

“I’m done with Jekyll and Hyde,” Regina mutters. “Can’t we go back to Hades? At least his mind games were _real_.” Nothing here feels real, but it’s just similar enough to be disconcerting. _Funhouse mirrors._ They’re being distorted and reimagined, fractured into tiny pieces that aren’t themselves and forced to look at them in the eye. Regina flinches every time the Evil Queen stands opposite her and the Queen shudders each time she sees anyone else in her reflection, and Emma is always between their alter egos, always flanked and never alone in every grim new reflection.

 

It’s comforting, in a sense, for a girl who’s only ever had people around her who’d left her. It pricks at something behind her eyes, makes it difficult to breathe in anything but short bursts, and Regina strokes her thumb against Emma’s hand like she understands.

 

The ghostlings grow more solid as the floors continue, each a little harder to knock out or knock off the platform. “We’re about three-quarters of the way up,” Regina says after Emma has to slam one over the head with his own gun. “Think the serum is at the top?” 

 

“Has to be. What else would Hyde be protecting?” Emma eyes a fourteen-year-old Emma in the mirror, her arms wrapped around a Regina dressed in that amazing red Camelot number, and feels a little envious. “I want to get home already and finish this,” she mutters, sulky. She’s finally with Regina after _years_ of longing, and they’ve barely had a quiet moment since; let alone one without Regina’s evil twin lurking on the fringes.

 

Regina grins at her, that warm but mischievous smile that Emma’s fallen in love with over the years, and Emma leans back against her shoulder. “I know what you want to finish,” she says, tilting her face so she can brush her lips along Emma’s cheekbone.

 

“Mm. Do that again.” It’s easy in a way that Emma had never imagined it would be before the split. They’ve always been comfortable– well, since they’d stopped killing each other– always been at home with each other, but there have been so many little missteps over the years that Emma had never dreamed of it being this simple this quickly.

 

Of course, it isn’t this simple at all when Emma looks beyond the easy circle that is the two of them and sees the third woman they’re with glaring at them. The Queen makes no secret of her distaste with them both, and Emma twinges with guilt and resentment at once when she meets her eyes. 

 

She closes her own instead, sliding an arm around Regina and kissing soft hair with shaky breath. When she opens her eyes, it’s to Regina and the Queen with locked gazes, both of them burning so hot that Emma feels as though she might catch fire from the electrified air between them. 

 

She stumbles away from Regina and says hastily, “We should move on. Get back…you know.” She ducks her head, her own eyes sly, and when she turns back to them, both women are watching her instead with the same heated gazes.

 

Turning back is a struggle, but she makes it to the stairs just in time to be bowled over by a ghostling twice her size. “Wha–“ She’s thrown against the clear column at the center of the tower, hanging onto it before she trips down another flight of stairs, and the ghostling charges onward toward where the Queen and Regina are still standing.

 

_No_ , just toward Regina. His beady eyes are blank, his enormous jowls swinging as he moves, and Regina sidesteps and yanks a sword out of his belt in one smooth move. She jabs it into his leg with no response and he lets out a muffled grunt and swings a meaty fist at her head before Regina has let go of the sword. 

 

It connects before Emma can stand up, sending Regina reeling backward with a cry. She slams against the stairwell and Emma scrambles for her, reaches to throw herself in front of the rapidly approaching ghostling to protect Regina.

 

But the ghostling is already slowing, his features confused, and he squints at his leg as though the pain is beginning to break him free of Hyde’s grasp. Regina rubs her head, wiping blood off her mouth and struggling to stand, and Emma keeps an arm in front of her and holds out a wary hand. 

 

The ghostling speaks. It’s the first time Emma’s heard one talk. “Watch the mirrors for–“ he starts, sounding bewildered, and then the Queen stalks across the platform and tears out his heart in a swift movement.

 

“No,” Regina croaks out, and Emma watches with a satisfied sort of dread as the Queen crushes the ghostling’s heart and hurls his corpse off the platform with a wave of violet magic. “No, you can’t–!” She stands up, her fists clenched. “What the hell did you do? He was _talking_ to us! He wasn’t under Hyde’s control anymore!” 

 

“It’s fine,” the Queen says, rolling her eyes. “He was an inconsequential pawn. You’re welcome for saving your life.” She sounds miffed. Behind her, a reflection of the Evil Queen as Emma had seen her during her trip to the past throws back her head and laughs.

 

“Of course you think it’s fine!” Regina grinds out, eyes flashing and voice rising. “You don’t feel any remorse!” 

 

“And you desperately wish you didn’t, either,” the Queen says haughtily, scowling at Regina. 

 

“Yes!” Regina says furiously, helpless despair swimming in her eyes. “But I still _do._ ” She wipes away more blood, an angry streak of it across the back of her hand. “It’s what makes me human.” She clenches her fists. “And you a _monster_.” 

 

“I’m a monster?” The Queen scoffs. “I’m not the one who looked my own reflection in the eye and crushed her heart.” In moments like this, both of them hurt and angry and uncontained, Emma can barely tell what difference there is between them. 

 

Regina sneers right back at her, though it lacks the same disgust. “Don’t play the martyr. It doesn’t suit you. You came back to Storybrooke to destroy me.” 

 

“Only one of us seeks the other’s destruction,” the Queen shoots back, swooping past them to the stairs. She rips out a half-dozen hearts before Emma and Regina catch up to her, the kid gloves gone with Regina’s renewed disapproval.

 

“If I don’t destroy you then I lose everyone I love!”

 

“Not Henry! Not her!” The Queen jabs a finger at Emma and Emma quails at the idea of being a part of this conversation. The Queen is, as always, relentless. “Tell her the truth, _Em-ma_. Tell her how much you love that darkness she loathes.” 

 

Emma shakes her head, stepping back. Regina says, her voice hoarse, “Nice try. Emma was the one to bring me the serum in the first place. Emma _wanted_ me to kill you.” 

 

The Queen hesitates, her brow furrowing as she sifts through her memories, and she lets out a mocking laugh without nearly the same confidence as before. “Nonsense. Emma, at least, knows the value of a little _bite_.” She clamps her teeth down with a snap, smirking when Regina’s face darkens.

 

Emma intervenes. “Okay, no.” She says, turning back around and making a beeline for the next staircase. She isn’t a weapon to be used by either of them– isn’t a weapon at all, and not for this fury. “I brought it to you because you said you were miserable. I thought you should– you should get the choice, at least. I was being _supportive_.” She makes it halfway up to the next platform before she stares down at them both. “That doesn’t mean that it’s what I’d have chosen myself.” 

 

“Emma,” Regina says, her eyes widening, and Emma feels guilty for putting any pressure on her at all. “You never said.” 

 

“It’s your choice. Not mine. Both of yours.” Emma nods to the Queen, a restless thought finally emerging. “You keep saying that it isn’t as simple as the two of you being…separate entities in one body. You both made the decision to do what you did.” 

 

The Queen shakes her head. “I did _not._ I would never have–“

 

“Of course you wouldn’t,” Regina says, angry again. “You’ve only ever wanted to corrupt _me_.” They’re all moving up a floor and then another, Emma hastily knocking back ghostlings where she can before the Queen can kill more of them. “You wanted me weak. You’ve always wanted to prove that I’m worthless like this– that I’m no one without you.” 

 

“I loved you. I _protected_ you.”

 

“You wanted to make me a monster!” Regina snaps at the Queen. “You wanted to turn me into my _mother_! And you won!” She spins around, flinging magic at a ghostling teetering on the edge of the platform, her voice strident and close to breaking. “You turned me into exactly the hateful– disgusting–“ She’s crying angry tears as her face and eyes flush red, her hands pushing helplessly at her hair and the Queen rigid in front of her. “You won and I pushed you back and all you’ve been trying to do since is defeat me again. How _dare_ you call me betrayer for trying to do to you what you did to me. How dare you–“

 

“I gave you what you needed to survive,” the Queen growls. Her dress has been torn by a hapless ghostling and she doesn’t seem to notice, eyes flashing and dangerous. “Don’t tell me you haven’t suffered since you threw me aside.” 

 

“You tried to crush me!” Regina rubs at her tears, smears her mascara and glares up at the Queen. “You took away every single thing I loved about myself and turned me into everything I hated. And you _never stopped_. Every day– Every minute– I just wanted to _breathe_ ,” she gasps out, and Emma has to restrain herself with her hands locked into each other so she won’t go to her.

 

This isn’t her battle. This is… She’s fought her battles with them both and she’s still furious with the Queen for her betrayal, but she has no place in this fight. But the Queen’s face is stony and her discomfort and anger mingle on her face, and Emma thinks she might have to intervene anyway when Regina says helplessly, “Of course I suffered when you…of course I’ve struggled without you. But what other choice did I have? I had to be strong.” 

 

“We were strong together,” the Queen says, and her mouth is twisting downward and she takes a step forward. “We were _whole._ ”

 

“I know. I know.” Regina stares at her hands and the Queen makes a motion like she might walk to her. Instead, she stands still with her hands at her sides and Regina gulps in a breath and doesn’t speak. “But all you did was hurt us.”

 

“I did what you couldn’t.” 

 

“Yes,” Regina says, and she stares at twin Evil Queens in the mirror, each one with a possessive hand splayed over Mirror Emma’s abdomen. “I missed you, you know,” she whispers, the fight draining out of her, and she turns to the stairway and escapes the platform before the Queen can follow.

 

“She killed me,” the Queen says, her forehead wrinkling like she still can’t process what it is that Regina’s admitted. “Why would she–“

 

Emma is so, so tired of everyone hurting all the time. “People are complicated, Regina,” she says wearily. “Sometimes we kind of want to push you off a cliff but still care a whole damn lot.”

 

“I’m not emotionally incompetent,” the Queen scoffs. “I _know_ what she’s like–“ She pauses, blinking at Emma with sudden understanding. “Ah.” 

 

“Shut up,” Emma says with perfect emotional competence, and she stomps up the stairs after Regina. 

 

It’s the top floor. She doesn’t know how they’d gotten there so suddenly, during all the fighting. It’s barely a floor at all– just a narrow disc of a platform that’s crowded with all three of them on it. And floating above the center column of the tower, sparking electricity around it, is the final vial of serum.

 

“Careful,” Regina says when she reaches for it, a hand on her elbow. “You’re going to electrocute yourself.” 

 

“Relax.” She dares a smug little quirk of her lips. “I think you’ve forgotten just how good I am at breaking into anything.” She brushes past the Queen to descend one floor, fishing through a table and finding a pair of rubber gloves within it. She slides one on and plucks the serum from the center of the column. “See? Easy.”

 

A low static sounds below them, and Emma blinks and stares around. If Hyde’s left a booby trap–

 

But no, everything seems the same. She glances down the platforms around them and sees ghostlings still unconscious, sees empty floors and bare walls, sees the figures in the mirror–

 

The figures in the mirrors are still moving, still reflecting at their trio long after they’d departed those floors. There are Emmas and Reginas and Evil Queens everywhere, their faces lifted and blank. And they’re rising, clawing their way up the mirror toward the top platform, their hands emerging from the mirrors like half-solid beings, all reaching for Emma.

 

“Ghostlings,” Regina says unnecessarily. “That’s where they’ve been coming from.” 

 

“We have to get out of here. Drop the serum,” the Queen orders Emma.

 

“What?”

 

“Drop it. Destroy it. We can’t risk it getting into the wrong hands.” 

 

Emma can’t stifle the _imagine that_  on her face, but she does as ordered, hurling the serum to the ground. It hits hard floor and shatters, the liquid spreading in a pool beneath them, and a half dozen Evil Queens in the mirrors gnash their teeth and float through the air toward them. The static around them grows louder, and Emma can’t think of what to do next. She twists around and sees a contorted version of herself nearly at the platform below them.

 

“The portal!” Regina shouts over the static. “We have to close the portal!”

 

“Can’t we do that from the other side?” Emma demands frantically, shoving an Evil Queen ghostling who’s gotten close enough to reach them. She floats back, still too wispy to crash to the ground, and the Queen sends a barrage of magic at the ghostling. 

 

“It’s too massive. We have to– to–“ Regina narrows her eyes, staring up at the portal hovering over them like a storm cloud. “We have to create a stopper somehow. Some kind of plug that’ll keep it from letting any more ghostlings through.” She dodges a ghostling with grace, a little blonde Emma who scrabbles at her skirt. “I’ll need your help.” She’s looking at Emma, and Emma steps forward at once to join her under the portal.

 

Her eyes flicker to the Queen, still tired and angry and stubborn, and the Queen offers her a half-smile and a disdainful sniff and whirls around in acquiescence, fending off ghostlings as Regina takes Emma’s hands. “Ready?”

 

The magic that surges through them is a touchstone by now, a comforting sensation of _home_ and _love_ and power coursing through her veins, peaceful and exhilarating at once. There’s magic pouring from her hands, shaped with Regina’s skilled hands into what they need, and she can feel the surge carry through her and into Regina.

 

It’s always overly intimate, always like a touch that grazes across every secret place within them, and Emma shivers and lets the fire roll over her skin and back to her hands. Regina’s eyes are lidded when she looks up at Emma, her gaze sweeping over her, potent as a kiss. And it’s somehow even more intensewhen they don’t deny it, when there’s the promise of _more_ instead of another cold shower when she gets home. 

 

She buries herself in Regina; is one with her as they rise and fall, and only once they’re inexorably twined together does she sense the dark gaps within Regina, the empty places that are cold and lonely as a black hole. She can feel the grief within Regina as the other woman is carried along with Emma when she probes at them, can feel aching despair and wants to reach out through emptiness to–

 

Regina shudders and the magic shudders with her, pushing Emma gently back to where their hands are joined and a pulsing cloud of magic surrounds them. “It's enough. Let’s go,” she says, and then her eyes widen and her lips part–

 

Emma twists around, leaving the magic stopper for Regina to balance as she catches sight of the Evil Queen, surrounded on all sides by ghostlings. She’s batting at them with useless magic, laughing wildly as she throws one aside and hissing as another gets in a hit. They’re closing in on the Queen, closing in on Emma and Regina so they can’t break through the mob to her, and Regina says urgently, “We have to go.” 

 

“No. We can’t– Regina– the Queen–“ Emma reaches for her, panicked. The Queen is still laughing, still fighting, and she looks up at Emma in surprise as though she hadn’t expected her. A ghostling crashes into Emma’s arm, the unpleasant almost-solid sensation shoving her back, and Regina seizes Emma with her free hand.

 

“Emma, no!”

 

“I’m not leaving her behind!” The crowd of ghostlings seem to be getting larger, a dozen Evil Queens between Emma and the authentic one, and she can barely see the Queen as the other woman nods to Regina in acquiescence. The Queen is helpless against this many of them, no matter how much she gloats, and she nearly loses her balance on the platform. “Oh, like _hell_ –“

 

“Emma, she’s doing this for you,” Regina says pleadingly, and there’s a note of _something_ in her voice that has Emma turn back to her, has Emma see wetness gleaming in her eyes. “We have to close this portal and get back to our son.” 

 

“No,” Emma says, straining against Regina’s grip. It’s gone from firm to unbreakable, and she thinks there must be magic involved in keeping her in Regina’s grasp. “No, she’s…” _A part of you. The woman I love._ She’s been angry and betrayed and she still cares too much, still can’t flee for safety and leave a piece of Regina trapped in a different world, surrounded by enemies. “I can’t lose you!” 

 

She thinks Regina might snap, might growl _she isn’t me_ and yank her right through the portal. She thinks that Regina only has so much patience for someone she loathes, and that Emma’s pushed her too far at last. She doesn’t imagine this: a breath against her cheek like a kiss; a surge of energy massive and deadly and bright; Regina with an arm around her and fire in her eyes as a wave of magic washes over the tower and tears the ghostlings to bits.

 

“You were right,” Regina says, taking in a shuddery breath. “I am the only one who can defeat the Evil Queen.” 

 

The Queen is left alone, swept back by the force of the magic, and she topples from the platform an instant later. Emma’s heart stops but she’s already on the move, catching the Queen’s hand and yanking her up flush against her. She sways from the sudden weight on her, wraps an arm around the Queen’s waist, and Regina says, “Now!” and Emma leaps up toward the portal.

 

The magical plug they’d created is still in Regina’s hands, and Emma can sense Regina in the portal behind them, tugging it into place as they topple out of the portal. But she can also feel the comforting relief of the Queen’s body against hers, her arms still tight on Emma’s elbows, and everything else fades into background static.

 

They emerge from the portal as it ripples in the air and compresses and vanishes, gone for good. They’re in the author’s mansion, Hyde nowhere in sight, and Emma’s kissing the Queen before she can think of anything else. The Queen slides a leg between hers and Emma wraps her legs around her waist and they topple forward, lips glued together and hands everywhere, and Emma can’t feel anything but overwhelming relief and love as they land on Regina’s bed with a thump.

 

_Regina’s bed_. The purple magic that had whisked them there just in time is fading, and Emma grasps harder onto the Queen as the Queen bites at her neck, moving lightning-quick as she maneuvers her fingers into Emma’s jeans. Yet there’s still the sense of something missing, something lost along the way, and Emma tears herself away from the Queen and looks up.

 

Regina is standing across the room, her hand rigid on the doorknob. “I soundproofed the room,” she says stiffly. “I don’t want Henry hearing any of this. But if this is what you need–“ 

 

Emma remembers the Queen taunting Regina and is instantly stricken. “Regina, I–“

 

“It’s all right,” Regina murmurs. “You love…You love all of me, more than I ever could. I can’t be angry about that.” The tears from before still glimmer in her eyes, and her smile is shaky. “I’ll…just have to learn to share, I suppose.” 

 

“Regina.” And she aches enough to slide away from the Queen and off the bed, crossing the room with careful steps and the anticipation of something that will feel _right._ The Queen lounges on the bed, watching her departure with sharp eyes, and Emma manages a smile for her, too, before she takes Regina’s hands in her own and kisses her.

 

Regina kisses her back, sweet and gentle and still so sad, and Emma deepens the kiss and strokes the bare skin of Regina’s back in little circles. Regina shivers and moves closer, slipping her own hands against Emma’s abdomen where the Queen has already somehow ripped her shirt. And Emma’s certain that this is exactly where they belong.

 

“Oh,” Regina breathes into Emma’s mouth, her legs bumping against the bed. She looks at it in surprise– the Queen stares back, brows quirked as though she knows what Emma’s trying to do– and then back at Emma with rising uncertainty. “Emma…”

 

Emma kisses her again and twists around as new hands land on her hips, fingers digging into her sides. “Let her have this,” the Queen drawls, tugging Emma against her. Regina goes with them, still locked in Emma’s embrace, and Emma sucks in a breath as the Queen nips her shoulder. “At worst, it’s no different than lonely self-pleasuring in your bedroom late at night, crying out her name when you come and pathetically ashamed of your own pining.” 

 

Emma blinks at the Queen, bemused. Regina glares at her but doesn’t let go of Emma. “If this is what you want…”

 

“I want you,” Emma whispers. “I want all of you.” She kisses Regina again, feels the Queen peel off her shirt with typical impatience, feels Regina’s fingers quiver and then brush against the lower curve of her breast. Regina moves so slow and the Queen so quickly that it’s like being dunked in ice cold water and set on fire at once, desperate to savor it all and desperate to come already and Emma jerks against the Queen and turns in Regina’s arms to kiss the Queen hard. 

 

Regina exhales a huffy sigh and drags her teeth along the curve of Emma’s neck. Emma lets out an embarrassing little squeak that has the Queen laughing as she ravages her lips and slides a hand down Emma’s pants. “Wet,” she purrs, lifting her face to catch Regina’s eye knowingly. “Oh, she likes us like this.” 

 

Regina draws a ragged breath against Emma's spine, her hand coming up higher, a sharp movement of her teeth to unclasp Emma’s bra. The Queen sighs approvingly, her fingers twitching against Emma’s clit. Emma bucks against her, breathless, and Regina murmurs, “Is this…?” and never finishes her sentence, her thumbs scraping against Emma’s nipples, her body pressed to Emma’s as Emma writhes beneath her counterpart’s ministrations.

 

There’s a certain kind of magic to this that Emma’s never reached before, to the Queen demanding new sensations from her every moment as Regina’s lips and fingers creep and tease and never push. She’s being pulled in every direction, desperate for friction and for the hands that knead at her chest; desperate for the harsh kisses that the Queen offers and for the way Regina’s teeth tug at the shell of her ear. She’s being _explored_ , all of her laid bare for roving touches, and she doesn’t know when she’d lost her jeans but she’s suddenly aware that she’s naked.

 

The Queen slides a finger into her and then a second, and it’s so sudden that Emma groans and grinds against her hand desperately. She’s barely standing now, supported only by Regina’s hands easing her ass up so she can wrap her legs around the Queen again. There’s a resignation to it– to each uncertain move of Regina’s, as though she’s only a guest in this room instead of a piece of _them_ – and it has Emma leaning back as her legs snake around the Evil Queen, pressing her head to the curve of Regina’s neck and kissing it desperately. “I need…I need,” she pants, biting hard on her jawline. Regina makes a strangled noise. 

 

The Queen smirks at them both, adding a third finger and thrusting in a sharp, twisting motion. Emma moves in time with her, digs the heels of her feet into the Queen’s ass and feels Regina stagger a step closer to give the Queen better access to Emma. “Evil,” Emma gasps out, rising and falling wildly into the Queen’s hand. “Both of you.” 

 

“You’ve figured me out,” Regina says, nipping at Emma’s lip. Emma sucks Regina’s lower lip into her own mouth in response, slides her tongue against soft skin and feels a second set of teeth on her breasts, biting down painfully as the Queen’s fingers speed up. 

 

Emma is teetering on the edge, rocking between both women as their mouths make her wild, her skin alive and aflame and her heart pounding; and then Regina’s hand creeps lower still and a fourth finger– Regina’s, _oh god_ – barely dips into the tight space that the others have widened and Emma screams.

 

Her orgasm slams out of her like a rocket, fires through her body from her core and explodes until she can’t breathe– she can’t see, she can’t think, she can’t do anything but shake violently between two bodies that hold her close and still haven’t ceased touching her. The Queen motions for a moment and their clothes are gone, too– is she just casually undressing them all?– and it’s heated skin pressed to Emma, her head pounding and her body still shaking as she rides out the last of the sensations.

 

Her head jerks back again, pressed to Regina’s neck and the comforting vibration of her laughter. When she finally tears herself away, it’s to the Queen with her index finger in her mouth, the rest of her hand still glistening. She grins, catlike and smug, and Emma groans and turns back to Regina.

 

And somehow within minutes they’re back again, this time maneuvered into position by the indomitable Queen, who is…sitting on Emma’s face, naturally. Emma’s lying on the bed, her knees hooked over Regina’s shoulders and Regina’s face buried between her legs, and Emma tastes the Queen and revels in the way that even she can be brought down to reality with well-placed fingers and tongue and teeth. 

 

Regina is still methodical and efficient, as superb at bringing Emma to the same peaks as her other half, and Emma strains and bucks against her as the Queen’s thighs slam against the sides of Emma’s head and she falls back.

 

Emma shoves her back when she needs to breathe, sending her toppling between Emma’s legs. She lands instead on Regina, who springs back as though she’s been stung. “Coward,” the Queen sniffs, looking absurdly disappointed at Regina’s reaction. “Don’t tell me you haven’t wondered what it might be like.” 

 

“Of course I haven’t wondered,” Regina says indignantly. “I’m not _you_. I don’t–“ Emma twists between them and kisses her, eager to avoid another fight _now_. The Queen shifts beneath them, her legs tangling with Emma’s as Emma’s legs tangle with Regina’s, and everyone is suddenly entwined, Regina determinedly hanging onto Emma but the Queen twisting to hover above them, a magnificent figure even while naked and still somehow imperious. 

 

Emma wriggles under Regina to sit behind her against the headboard, her fingers drawing patterns in her thighs, circling closer and closer to her clit. The Queen smirks and leans forward to kiss Emma, dragging her breasts against Regina’s in an ever-so-unintentional motion.

 

Regina lets out a strangled moan and keeps her hands stiff against her sides, refusing to move any closer. Emma watches the two women in fascination. With their makeup smudged and faded and their clothing gone, they’re perfectly identical, long dark hair and light brown skin and lips just the same shade of pink. But there’s no confusing them: not when Regina’s eyes are warm and the Queen’s glitter with danger; not when the Queen moves with the confident aloofness of a lioness and Regina moves with the grace and tightly-wound energy of a wildcat; not when Regina’s every move is focused on their comfort and the Queen’s on their pleasure. It’s a strange sort of duality, best contained in the Regina that Emma had fallen in love with, and together these two pieces of her remain the…well, _ultimate_. 

 

The Queen’s kiss is harsh and teasing, too long and just a hair distracted. She moves in closer, grinds against Regina’s leg and keeps her hands on Emma as her body presses against Regina’s, and Emma laughs softly against her lips as she feels Regina’s hands move instinctively to the Queen’s hips at last.

 

The Queen pulls away from Emma’s lips and Regina lurches against hers, kisses her hard and angrily as she never has Emma. It’s violent and needy and fierce, hands reaching out to clutch each other and the Queen is very suddenly on her back beside Emma, eyes dilated and lips curled in a delighted smile as Regina bends over her and continues the furious onslaught. 

 

It softens. Regina isn’t made for anger and hatred as her counterpart has been, and her lips move slower in time; her legs wind around the Queen’s and her thumb brushes against the Queen’s clit and the Queen bites her shoulder so hard that a gasping sob breaks free of Regina’s lips and she lurches against the Queen, surrendering control once more. She slides down her body and the Queen crooks a finger to Emma and there’s suddenly a strap-on dangling from her hand ( _how the fuck_ , but Regina doesn’t seem surprised by it and it must have been somewhere in the room before now) and there’s more movement, more kissing–

 

Emma rocks against Regina and keeps fingers curled inside the Queen that move with every back-and-forth. Regina’s back is pressed to the Queen, her eyes squeezed shut as the Queen kisses a trail from her ear to her jaw to the back of her neck. They’re three joined into one entity, all of them so caught up in each other that Emma can’t remember where she begins and where the others end. She’s overwhelmed, over-sensitized, and they all come together in a rush like a twice-split river reaching the top of a waterfall; crashing over the edge with an explosion of magic that none of them can contain.

 

* * *

 

She wakes up later with the afternoon sun streaming into the room and each Regina with an arm flung over her. They bend and meet on her hip, Regina’s hand on the Queen’s. There’s a wild mop of brown hair against her back, and as she lies still in an attempt to recapture that moment of peace, it shifts. Regina pulls herself out of her bed, running her fingers through her hair and settling an arm around her abdomen as she walks to the window.

 

Emma watches her through half-open eyes, traces the curves of her body and admires the way the warm sunlight floods over Regina. She’s so stunningly beautiful, and last night (this morning? She’s lost all track of time) had been…

 

She huddles deeper into her pillow in a futile attempt to quash the glowing smile from her face. She’s achey and tired in all the best ways, and it feels as though every joint had gotten a workout. The Queen had been relentless and Regina determined to match her, which had left Emma…aggressively sated. Many times over. With the stamina to return the favors, over and over again. 

 

It had been a good night.

 

She’s startled when something under her moves– a hand. The Queen is tugging it out from under her, careful enough that she must think Emma is still asleep, and Emma doesn’t disabuse her of the notion. She isn’t ready to be awake yet and deal with…whatever comes next.

 

Instead, she watches as the Queen walks barefoot across the room, her stride still regal and straight-backed, and slides her arms around Regina. Regina sighs and shakes her head, and the Queen says, “ _This_ is what you’re going to be prudish about?” 

 

Regina rolls her eyes, but she doesn’t pull away. “Last night was for Emma,” she says weakly.

 

The Queen hums a response that Emma can’t make out, and then says, “I want to kill every person who's ever touched her,” which is kind of like a declaration of love, Emma guesses.

 

More surprising is Regina’s rueful laugh, glittering like music in the silent room. “So do I,” she confesses, raising her hands a bit to settle over the Queen’s on her stomach.

 

The Queen sounds satisfied when she leans forward, smirking out the window. “I’ve already turned the last one into a rat.” 

 

“Did you?” Regina sounds startled, almost worried for a moment. Then her shoulders relax and she says, “ _Good_ ,” so fervently that Emma would totally be borderline charmed by both of them this gleeful if she weren’t… _Bad thing_ , she reminds herself forcefully. _Bad Queen._

 

But she’s still watching them fondly when the Queen says, “And I took care of Graham when he–“ 

 

Regina jerks away from her as though stung, and the smile fades from Emma’s lips. “Please don’t talk about that,” Regina rasps, flattening herself against the window and away from the Queen.

 

The Queen scowls, glaring at the back of Regina’s head with bitter disappointment. After a long moment of silence, the conversation dropped, she presses a kiss to Regina’s ear and then another to her temple. Regina stands in silence, accepting the kisses and the arms that wind around her again; until after a moment of tension, she turns in the Queen’s embrace and kisses her gently and carefully.

 

When they part, they’re still staring at each other with wary eyes, and the Queen says, “I would die for them, too.” 

 

“What?” Regina doesn’t blink, still caught in the Queen’s gaze. Neither of them notice Emma in the bed, finally sitting up against her pillows with the sheet wrapped around her.

 

The Queen’s brow furrows. “Emma. Henry. I would die to protect them,” she says, frowning as though she’s been taken by surprise by her own words. “I didn’t expect that.” 

 

“No one ever does,” Regina murmurs, stroking the Queen’s cheek– still careful, still gentle– and she slips out of her embrace and heads to the master bathroom. 

 

She doesn’t turn back once. But the Queen doesn’t tear her eyes from Regina’s back until the door clicks closed.

 

* * *

 

The house is blessedly silent until the evening. The others must have taken their newfound alliance with the Queen as a sign that life can finally return to normal, and it’s simultaneously hilarious and horrifying to see the way Henry’s eyebrows shoot up when he slams the front door and jogs into the kitchen to find the Evil Queen stirring a pot in the kitchen with a red-streaked apron. “Uh,” he says hesitantly. “That’s not a _person_ in that soup, is it?” 

 

“It’s your math teacher,” Emma says.

 

“It’s tomato paste,” Regina corrects her archly, sweeping past them to kiss Henry on the cheek. “How was your day, dear?” 

 

“It was fine. What’s going on? Did you beat Hyde? Is _she_ staying?” He peers over at the Queen, visibly torn between fascination and trepidation. “Are you staying?” 

 

“I don’t think your aunt would take well to that.” The Queen bores of stirring and leaves the spoon magically stirring by itself as she drifts across the room. She pats Emma’s ass casually as she passes her, and Emma nearly slices her finger instead of the peppers. “I have my vault. You’re welcome to visit.” 

 

Henry wrinkles his nose at them. “So…what? You’re all friends now?” 

 

“Hardly,” Regina says, her cheeks coloring. Emma grins to herself and doesn’t say a word. The Queen slips an arm around Regina’s waist, and Regina jerks away from her and claims the spot at the soup.

 

“Uh. Okay.” Henry glances around the room again, bewildered. “I’m just…going to go watch some TV.” 

 

“Homework first,” Regina and the Queen bark out in tandem, and Henry just rolls his eyes and heads upstairs.

 

The Queen stays for dinner, sneers at Zelena’s dark look and actually makes polite conversation with a grim-eyed Mary Margaret. Henry blinks at each of them and then down at his plate, and David clutches Neal with so much force that he begins to scream.

 

All in all, it’s a bearable dinner. Emma watches the Queen after dinner as she quizzes Henry on the digestive system and wanders off to find Regina, pausing outside the kitchen when she hears her name. 

 

“It’s just that I know how you feel about Emma,” Mary Margaret says gently, and Emma leans against the wall outside the kitchen and listens to the sound of Regina scrubbing dishes. “And we both know that she…has some attachment to your other half.” 

 

“So?” Regina sounds irritable. 

 

“You’d do anything for her, even…keeping that woman around.” Mary Margaret hesitates. “I know that’s where this new alliance is coming from.” 

 

“You have no idea where this new alliance is coming from,” Regina retorts.

 

Emma peers into the room for a moment, sees Regina frozen at the sink with Mary Margaret’s hand on her wrist, and she hears the murmur and steps back again as though stung. “You’re my best friend,” Mary Margaret murmurs. “I don’t want to see you sacrificed at the altar of our worst enemy.”

 

Emma can imagine Regina sag; can imagine discomfort she’d repressed coming back in full force. A dozen doubts wash over Emma at once, each more vicious than the next, and she steps away from the kitchen swiftly and avoids Regina’s eyes when she emerges from the room. 

 

“We should head out,” Regina says, a hand resting on Emma’s shoulder. “We may have closed the portal, but we don’t know how many ghostlings are still in town.” Emma nods shakily. 

 

* * *

 

The Queen strides ahead of them, Regina comfortable at a calmer pace and Emma’s head still spinning. _Sacrificed at the altar of our worst enemy. Sacrificed at–_ Regina had gone to _hell_ for Emma just weeks ago, and Emma hasn’t second-guessed any of Regina’s recent decisions as _for her_. Had they really reached some kind of peace, or is Regina playing nice for Emma’s sake? Is Regina suffering for Emma in silence, still loathing the Queen and–

 

She takes a deep breath and speeds up, glancing around almost desperately for a ghostling distraction. There’s a flash of movement to their right, and she blurts out, “Careful!” before she sees that it’s only a cat.

 

Regina and the Queen both blink at her, brows furrowed, and Emma laughs weakly. “Uh. I mean, careful walking in front of that display.” She jabs a thumb at the dress shop in front of them, the same wedding dress in the window that’s been there for thirty years now. “You know this town. They think anyone who stops in front of it is getting married.” 

 

Regina frowns. “Emma, are you all right? You’ve been quiet all night.” 

 

“She’s been planning our wedding.” The Queen sniffs. “I’m _not_ wearing white.”

 

Regina ignores her. “Emma?” 

 

“It’s fine.” Emma squeezes her fingers against her thumb. “I was just…thinking about what comes next.” 

 

“And you settled on a triple wedding?” the Queen says, but Regina’s eyes are settling into comprehension. “What else could _possibly_ come next?” 

 

“Well,” Regina says, and she breathes in quickly and exhales at half the speed, her eyes catching the Queen’s and holding. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to stay in the vault. Or…or in this town at all.” 

 

“ _What_?” the Queen demands, and Emma shrinks back, unwilling to push her own dread into this conversation to make Regina even more uncomfortable. “That’s it? You’re back to trying to get rid of me?” 

 

Regina’s voice is careful, thick with emotion. “I don’t have a choice. This isn’t sustainable, _Your Majesty_. How much longer…how long until you let us down again?” 

 

“ _Let you down_ ,” the Queen repeats, bitterly mocking. “Because it’s _always_ about you.” 

 

“You can’t change. I know you can’t change.” Regina leans against the window display, a sudden picture of weariness. “You’ve lost all the parts of you that might have wanted redemption or love more than hate. And it’s only…It’s only a waiting game now. How much longer before you make Henry lose faith in you? Before you hurt Emma and she can’t bounce back? Before you betray us all for power or vengeance or…or just because that’s how you’re made?” Her voice is shaky, her eyes downcast, and the Queen glares at her with scorn and disbelief. “I don’t want to have to hurt you again. I don’t want to see what you do to us.” 

 

“Please,” the Queen sneers, just as hurt. “You’ve wanted me gone from the start. Do you think you can slap on some pretty words and pretend you’re _selfless_? You’re a coward, Regina. You’re afraid of what we can all be together.” 

 

“I’m afraid of you breaking our hearts,” Regina whispers. “I just…You can go to another realm. Go…subjugate and do whatever you have to and come back and visit, I don’t care. But you can’t be trained to be good.” 

 

“I’m not an animal!” the Queen snarls, and she’s never looked more animalistic, her lips pulled back against her teeth and her eyes wild and her fingers half-clenched like claws. “I’m not a _beast_ you can train or cage or put down. You don’t get to use me and then reject me _again._ Emma–“ She turns pleadingly to Emma, her readymade ally.

 

There’s another flicker of movement where that cat had come from, and Emma tears her eyes away from it to stare at the two women in front of her. And she can only think of Mary Margaret, so certain that Regina has thrown herself into this to please Emma. “I…” She stares between them: at Regina’s anguished, determined face; at the Queen’s furious horror. “This is between you two. Not me. I can’t…I can’t make these decisions for either of you.” 

 

The Queen’s eyes flash and Regina’s eyes dull. “So this is it. You’ll send me away. Do I mean _nothing_ to you?” the Queen demands of Regina. 

 

“What you mean to me is irrelevant,” Regina says, her voice choked. “I have to do what’s best for everyone. And I know you can only fight your nature so much. I want to–“

 

“ _Stop claiming this is noble!_ ” the Queen barks out, and Regina flinches. “Did you think you would have more legitimacy once you _slept_ with me? Did you think that I’d be pliant to your wishes then? You _loathe_ me. You’ve said it. You want me gone!”

 

“That,” says a voice behind them, cold with rage. “Is something we have in common.”

 

“Hyde.” Emma spins around. They’d been so caught up in the ghostlings and the portal that they’d put him aside to deal with another day. He isn’t a threat, not without his army, and she’s surprised to see that he’d even tried confronting them.

 

He’s holding a gun– an old-fashioned model that looks more like a museum piece than a weapon– but what gives Emma pause is the way that it almost _ripples_ as he cocks it, something unnatural about it. The Queen raises an eyebrow, unimpressed, and Regina just glares. “Do you mind? This is a private conversation.” 

 

“You closed my portal. You took my minions and you _trapped_ me in this godforsaken wasteland.” Hyde’s face is twisted, barely recognizable. His body itself seems weakened with the closure of the portal, as though one blow could shatter it into dust. “And _you_. We had a deal.” 

 

The Queen shrugs, eyes glinting with amusement. “Deal’s off.” 

 

“ _Bitch_!” Hyde fires his gun.

 

They throw up magical shields in tandem, all three of them– and for a moment, it’s just as exhilarating as it had been before, when they’d been nothing but magic and fire and there had been no doubts– and their magic flares sharp and bright and strong in front of them.

 

The bullet tears through the magic like a drill against metal, grinding through pure energy and releasing wild sparks as it goes. Hyde laughs wildly. “Did you think I couldn’t stop you? Did you think I wasn’t prepared for you to double-cross me?” He fires again, and again, and again, until the bullets blow a hole into their magic and careen toward the Queen.

 

They never hit her.

 

That is, they never hit her because someone is suddenly standing between her and the bullets.

 

The bullets crash into Regina with so much force that one of them flies straight out of her back, narrowly missing the Queen. The Queen is gaping at Regina in shock as Regina collapses, folds under the attack and drops backward, her eyes wide and startled. Emma stares. Emma can’t think, can’t focus, can’t breathe, and she turns as though possessed and hurtles at Hyde’s smug face with rage and grief and horror. 

 

Her fist connects with his face and he crumbles into nothingness, just like that, an ashy pile of not-quite-human beneath her hand. It isn’t enough. She wants to– she needs to _hurt_ someone, oh god, _Regina_ –

 

A part of her can’t believe it’s true. Regina is invincible. Regina has endured more near-death situations than anyone should be able to survive, but… _Maybe it isn’t Regina who’s been the survivor. Maybe it’s…_

 

Regina is on the ground now, laid out with her upper body resting on the Queen’s lap. The Queen is still gaping at her, lips parted and disbelieving, and Regina’s hand is light against her cheek. Emma drops beside them, reaches for Regina’s other hand, listens to her slowing pulse, chokes out a sob.

 

“I thought you wanted me dead,” the Queen says blankly. “I thought you…”

 

“You’re…a part…of me,” Regina manages, coughing up blood, and Emma sobs again, feels the fingers in hers stir and then fall limp from the effort. “I wanted…to save you.” She wheezes, tugs at the Queen with one faltering hand until she drops her head. “I’m sorry.” 

 

“No. No, no, _no,_ I forbid this.” The Queen sounds almost like a child in that moment, like a girl who’s lost for the first time and can’t conceive of it. “Do _not_ close your eyes. Emma, _help me_.” She’s pouring magic into Regina’s wounds and Emma joins her, feels the magic sputter and dance away from whatever had been in those bullets. 

 

“It’s not working. It’s not–“

 

This can’t be the end. A dozen scenes flash before Emma’s eyes– _You’re Henry’s birth mother?_ to _I think we need to talk to our son_ to _Emma, you’re better than this_ and Regina’s shining eyes when she’d looked up at Emma in the past months– and Emma cries helplessly. She’s never going to see those shining eyes again. Regina’s never going to– she’s going to be _gone_ in a way that even the split couldn’t take her, she’s going to be lost forever and Emma can’t lose her. No. _No._ Her magic washes out of her and slides over Regina’s injuries, oil on water, mocking her inability to do more. “Regina. Regina, oh god. Don’t leave me,” she begs, the Queen trembling beside her with emotions that Emma can’t recognize.

 

Regina smiles up at them, her eyes finally flickering closed. “I love you,” she says, to one or both of them, the squeezing of Emma’s hand barely a movement. Her other hand touches the Queen’s cheek, inches it incrementally closer to her, and her lips press against the Queen’s forehead in a tender kiss before she falls backward again–

 

–And bursts into multicolored light, rings of it exploding from the place where she’d kissed the Queen and shattering her into a rainbow of fractured colors and lights. “Regina!” Emma shouts, terrified and hopeful and despairing, but her body is gone, shards of light dancing around them as though they’ve been set free.

 

And they coalesce around the Queen, who raises her face and stares at them in wonder, who holds out her hands and reaches for them and the earth is still shaking from the force of what had been… _true love’s kiss?_ Emma wonders, and her tears are dried from the wind that whips around them.

 

A kaleidoscope of broken light dances in place and flies to the Queen, coating her in what looks like glass, plating over her like vibrant scales over her skin and face and eyes. She doesn’t scrabble at it, doesn’t try to resist, just holds out her hands and waits.

 

She lets out a joyful cry as Emma waits, as the iridescence that had been Regina is absorbed into her skin, and then the cry transforms as well. The Queen– no, no longer the Queen, not with those eyes that Emma _knows_ and has missed so fiercely and silently– is still crying, but it’s pained now, Regina in an Evil Queen dress sobbing at the sky, and Emma draws her into her arms and kisses her as she trembles.

 

* * *

 

The house is a disaster area. Emma’s always thought it had been a bit too dark– had been envious of Regina’s big, bright mansion– but now it’s claustrophobic and there are rat pellets _everywhere_. She scowls at a bottle of rum in a kitchen cabinet, its cap riddled with tooth marks, and scowls harder at the chewed-up garbage bag that’s leaked all over the room. 

 

The last straw is finding the rat burrowed in the drawer she’d neglected to close completely before she’d last left. “How are you still _like_ this now?” she demands, throwing a handful of old t-shirts into the garbage as the rat chitters at her. “I’m going back to the loft. You can…deal with all of this whenever you turn human again.” 

 

She stomps out of the house, the few belongings that haven’t been touched by the rat in a bag. At least they’ve essentially been squatting in the house and she doesn’t have to deal with it longterm, because _fuck_ , she is so completely done with that chapter of her life.

 

Regina hasn’t called her since that first night, when she’d guided her into the house and nodded at everyone’s inquisitive looks. “It’s over,” she’d murmured. “Hyde is gone. Regina’s…” 

 

“Mom,” Henry had said first, and Regina had been wrapped in his embrace and then Mary Margaret’s, Zelena kissing her cheek and Regina accepting it all in silence. She’d claimed exhaustion and headed upstairs, and Emma still isn’t sure if she’s– if Regina had meant for her to follow.

 

So she hadn’t. And now it’s been a day of lurking at Mary Margaret’s place and waiting for a phone call that hasn’t come, and she misses Regina so much that she hadn’t slept at all last night. She’d stared at the ceiling and wondered if the past few weeks had been a fever dream instead of…

 

She slams on the brakes and whips her car around in a U-turn, driving back around the corner and up to Regina’s house. 

 

It’s already dark out, a full twenty-four hours since Regina had been made whole again. Henry had texted her earlier asking when she’d be over, and he opens the door now with relief. “She’s still upstairs,” he says, looking unhappy. “She came out this morning and made breakfast and took the baby for a little while, but then she said she was tired again and hasn’t come downstairs since.” 

 

“What happened last night?” Zelena asks, her eyes sharp, and Emma doesn't answer.

 

She heads upstairs instead, Henry's and Zelena’s eyes on her, and she slips into Regina’s bedroom silently.

 

“Zelena, I don’t want to _talk_ ,” comes Regina’s voice from somewhere under a mound of blankets, and Emma smothers a smile at the whining note to the voice. 

 

“It’s me,” she says instead, and Regina doesn’t respond, but the blankets shift and a space is cleared for her on the bed. 

 

Emma slides in beside her, wrapping her arms around Regina’s waist, and Regina squirms back so she’s pressed against Emma, her body relaxing again at the contact. Emma strokes her hair and breathes in her scent, reminding herself again that Regina’s real and alive and in her arms. 

 

Regina is still silent, though her own hands hold Emma’s in place, and Emma ventures, “How does it feel?”

 

“Quiet,” Regina murmurs, and there’s a sadness to her tone that has Emma’s arms tighten around her. “It feels quiet.”

 

“No more…two parts of you at war?” Emma asks tentatively, unsure of where she might be overstepping. 

 

Regina shakes her head. “No. I don’t even…feel like two parts anymore at all.” Her voice is thick and wet, and Emma aches for the loss in Regina's voice that she can’t understand. 

 

“That’s good, right?” she says, pressing a kiss to Regina’s hair. “You don’t have to fight all the time anymore. And here I thought that the split was really just so you could see what having sex with yourself was like.” 

 

She earns a wet chuckle, Regina twisting in her arms to regard her with mock-serious eyes. “You’re very lucky,” she says solemnly.

 

Emma laughs– half from relief that they’re still…whatever they are…and half from relief that Regina can still joke about it– and Regina kisses her, long and hard and heartfelt. “What will they think of me?” she whispers when she pulls back.

 

Emma’s heart is still thrumming from the kiss, and it takes her a moment to understand. “Think of you?” she repeats.

 

“When they know that I loved her.” The curtain around Regina’s eyes parts, the fear and uncertainty potent and turned inward. “How can I love that part of myself and still be…” Her voice trails off, her eyes lose their focus and her fingers are stiff against Emma’s stomach.

 

This is why she’s been hiding, then, terrified that the others might learn the truth. Emma presses her thumb to Regina’s lips, traces them, draws a line down to her chin to her chest to her heart. “I don’t think…I don’t think it’s wrong to feel that way about the Evil Queen. She kept you safe for a long time.” 

 

“She committed atrocities.” 

 

“Yeah.” The embers in Regina’s eyes blaze and die in a moment, uncertain and pleading under Emma’s gaze. “But she’s a part of what defines you now. And you…” Emma strokes the space over Regina’s heart, kisses her breast above it and searches for the right words. “You are good,” she echoes Regina’s words to her in a quiet New York apartment. They’d been overwhelming even then, and Emma hadn’t known how to react to such a pronouncement from someone she’d never thought had believed much in good and evil at all. “You’re a hero now, and that darkness inside you…it’s part of that, too.” 

 

“I don’t know,” Regina says, her voice heavy with tears. “I don’t know how I can see myself as good when I know that I’m _her_ , too. I don’t know how I can be good when I have her inside me again.” 

 

“Because she isn’t all evil,” Emma murmurs. “There are no easy splits down the middle, remember? There isn’t really a _she_ who did everything the Queen did. There’s just you.” 

 

Regina shakes her head, despair written across her face. “If that’s true…how can I love myself at all without being a monster?”

 

“I love you.” Emma puts a hand on Regina’s cheek, guiding her to meet Emma’s eyes. “All of you. Every wonderful and terrible piece of the woman that is Regina Mills.” The Evil Queen and the woman who’d sprung forth from her, the baggage and the history and the eternal war between good and evil that had produced a woman she’s inexorably drawn to. She ducks her head, made shy at the bold declaration, and looks at Regina through her eyelashes. “Does that help?” 

 

Regina searches her face, catches her gaze and exhales a warm breath against Emma’s lips. “I think so,” she whispers, and she smiles with mingled sadness and hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been working on this for so long that I can't even remember who I went to for help throughout. Thank you to you all on my TL for your patience and assistance throughout, you've been wonderful. And thank you to all those who read and reviewed and kudosed! Y'all are my faves and I love writing for you. <3


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